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Tag: Vice

  • Biographical comedy drama, Vice makes an Indian television premiere on Movies NOW, MNX and MN+

    Biographical comedy drama, Vice makes an Indian television premiere on Movies NOW, MNX and MN+

    MUMBAI: Delivering premium content to its viewers with Hollywood blockbusters premieres like The Girl in the Spiders Web and Creed II, Movies NOW, MNX and MN+ will simulcast another Indian television premiere, Vice, an American biographical comedy drama film this Sunday, 26 July  2020 at 1.00 pm and 9.00pm.

    Written and directed by Adam McKay, the well lauded 2018 film which received eight nominations at the 91 Academy Awards, including a Best Picture nomination and a win for Best Make-Up and Hairstyling, features Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell and Christian Bale, who won Golden Globes Best Actor Award for his performance as the former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in the movie. The plot of Vice revolves around Cheney who ingeniously wielded immense power as Vice President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that still resonate today. Later known for his extraordinary contributions, Cheney joined active administration service at the age of 25 as a staff aide to the then Governor of the state. During his service, he survived multiple heart attacks to see the United States of America through several landmark moments.

    Significant at a time when the world is pronouncing a range of opinions on the American Presidency and policies, this movie celebrates one of America’s most powerful and influential politicians. With the Vice television premiere, Movies NOW, MNX and MN+ continue their legacy of keeping its viewers connected to the biggest and best of Hollywood movies.

    Don’t forget to tune-into Movies NOW, MNX and MN+ on 26 July  2020 at 1:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. for the television premiere of Vice

  • Guest column: Navigating India as a global brand with a pre-conceived reputation

    Guest column: Navigating India as a global brand with a pre-conceived reputation

    MUMBAI: When an organisation, often termed globally as ‘a challenger’, ‘provocative’, or ‘millennial whisperer’, expands to be present across multiple screens reaching millions of new viewers in new geographies, there’s always a dilemma between living up to the years and years of brand legacy or forming a new identity that the local community can trust. On one side is the brand DNA and on the other are the cultural nuances of a country like India.

    As this proverb puts it in the best way, “Every two miles the water changes, every four miles the speech.” 

    In such a scenario, the biggest challenge for any global entity, especially in the content and media landscape, is to understand diversity, not only in the context of geographical boundaries or topographical differences but in terms of culture, food habits, customs, beliefs, attire, scripts, and more. 

    High mobile penetration and connectivity in the country have provided us with avenues that unify communication in a way that transcends most of the aforesaid barriers. A young girl in a remote town has access to not only entertainment at her fingertips but also more time at hand to be influenced or inspired. 

    This represents a great canvas to do business but also a high sense of responsibility when it comes to creating and distributing content. Hence, for those looking at the country from the outside, India cannot just be an opportunity game of exceptional audience numbers or percentages; it has to be a learning process to help brands navigate and set up a business away from home.

    Investment in research and local talent acquisition are two important factors that need to be emphasized on while drawing business models and go-to-market strategies for India. No one understands India like Indians and no amount of time invested is enough in understanding the nuances that make us truly who we are. 

    While establishing VICE in the country, the team deliberately invested time in hiring the best talent to form local content and research functions even before a business development team was put in place. This allowed the brand to develop its own indigenous tonality while keeping the global brand DNA intact. Furthermore, widespread on-ground primary research allowed the local teams to educate the global counterparts about the market and what makes it unique in terms of regional variations, etiquette and languages.

    It is an exciting time for India with a new wave of audiences coming online for the first time. These users will experience content and entertainment in way that they haven’t imagined yet. To play a significant role in creating a brand that represents the voice of the youth of India, and help bring their stories and creativity to the rest of the world, we have to believe in the importance of staying authentic. 

    Operating in India demands organizations to remain true to their core ethos. For VICE, it means content taking center-stage with a strong youth focus. And above all, full transparency while communicating with our audience. 

    In today’s dynamic times, companies have to create what the audience wants and not get influenced by what is working in some of the more developed parts of the world. We have to believe that we are building a culture that is unique and that will have an impact on how the parent brand does business in other parts of the world.  

    The author is CEOat Vice India. The views expressed here are her own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.

  • Vice & Telemundo tie up, former also expanding to MENA & India

    MUMBAI: Times Network’s India partner Vice Media, a publishing and video site and Telemundo, a Spanish-language TV network, will be tying up to produce content for NBCUniversal’s two Spanish-language networks — Universo and Telemundo with the aim of tapping into the young generation in the U.S. Hispanic market. According to PEW research, 20% of the U.S. millennial population are Latinos.

    Vice Media has additional plans to expand to different languages. It soon wants to expand into Africa, India, and around 18 other southeast Asian countries.

    Vice Media, in March this year, made plans to start expanding into the Middle East. It hopes to launch a digital channel and a web site this summer, and, in all likelihood, a 24-hour regional cable channel, to produce lifestyle and news content for MENA (Middle-East and North Africa) region in English, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Urdu.

    Vice and Telemundo will be work in alliance to produce weekly documentary segments on topics such as sports, music, food and culture with the plan to telecast it on Telemundo News.

    The two will also jointly launch a weekly one-hour show for the Spanish-language entertainment cable network in the U.S. Universo which reaches over 40 million households. This will the first time that Vice would produce a show particularly aimed at the U.S. Hispanic market.

    Telemundo and Universo president Luis Silberwasser said that the innovative partnership would permit them to increase the appeal of their factual content to the millenials (Latinos) and for Vice to reach the growing U.S. Hispanic market.

    Vice Media in the U.S. and Mexico also plan to produce content for Telemundo’s digital and social platforms. Vice would eventually be present in around 50 countries.

  • A+E Networks joins hands with Vice to launch Viceland

    A+E Networks joins hands with Vice to launch Viceland

    MUMBAI: A+E Networks and Vice Media have inked a joint venture – Viceland that will offer Vice as a new 24-hour channel programmed and produced exclusively by Vice.

     

    A+E Networks’ channel H2 will be transitioned to Viceland. H2 is an international channel brand in over 68 territories, which will continue to operate outside the US.

     

    Launching in early 2016, Viceland will be distributed in approximately 70 million homes, and will feature hundreds of hours of new programming developed and produced entirely in-house by the  creative minds of Vice.

     

     A+E Networks president & CEO Nancy Dubuc said, “Vice has a bold voice and a distinctive model in the marketplace. This channel represents a strategic fit and a new direction for the future of our portfolio of media assets. Shane Smith has led Vice from a fledgling magazine into a global media brand and all of us at A+E are excited to work with him and his passionate and innovative team.”

     

    Oscar-winning writer & director Spike Jonze, a long-time Vice partner and creative director for the company, has been overseeing the development of the new channel, from show creation, to production, to brand identity.

     

    “It feels like most channels are just a collection of shows,” said Jonze. “We wanted Viceland to be different, to feel like everything on there has a reason to exist and a strong point of view. Our mission with the channel is not that different from what our mission is as a company: it’s us trying to understand the world we live in by producing pieces about things we’re curious about, or confused about, or that we think are funny. And if it doesn’t have a strong point of view then it shouldn’t be on this channel.”

     

    Viceland will launch with a full slate of prime-time shows, including Gaycation (with Ellen Page and Ian Daniel), Huang’s World (with Eddie Huang), Noisey (with Zach Goldbaum), Vice World Of Sports (with Sal Masekela), Black Market (with Michael K. Williams), Flophouse, Party Legends, Weediquette (with Krishna Andavolu), and more.

     

    The launch of Viceland coincides with Vice’s growth across online and mobile. There’s a growing white space in the realm of Gen-Y programming, and to fill that void Viceland will offer engaging, original content covering fashion, food, music, sports, and more. The new network represents a critical build-out for the company: Vice will now be producing gold-standard content for all three screens.

     

    “This network is the next step in the evolution of our brand and the first step in our global roll-out of networks around the world,” said Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith. 

     

    “First: It allows us to be truly platform agnostic and enable our audience to view our content wherever they want. Second: It represents a continued growth in our content quality and raises the ceiling even higher for our brilliant teams to attack stories from long form features to multi-episode series and even short form interstitials that will challenge the accepted norms of current TV viewing. Third: We will test new and innovative monetization strategies placing VICELAND at the pointy tip of the spear of the rapidly changing terrain of TV advertising,” informed Smith.

     

    He further added,  “All in all, this new network allows us to continue our innovation in storytelling and content creation and take it to the next level. We couldn’t be happier working with Nancy and her team at A+E and we couldn’t be more excited to offer this opportunity to our Vice family of partners, producers, shooters, editors, and staff, to go out and make our indelible imprint on the cultural fabric of this modern age.”

    Drawing on Vice’s history as an innovator in branded content online, Viceland plans to work with brand partners to re-imagine the nature of the television commercial too—making the commercial time a valuable extension of the entertainment programming itself, and keeping viewers engaged, even as they follow Vice content across screens and formats.

     

    A+E Networks will oversee technical operations and distribution and will work with Vice on ad sales and sponsorships. Vice will also handle all marketing across all platforms, utilizing its various relationships with partners across mobile and digital.

  • UDigital launches new brand viz Arré

    UDigital launches new brand viz Arré

    MUMBAI: Ronnie Screwvala, B Saikumar and Ajay Chacko founded digital media venture UDigital has announced a new brand named- Arré. The venture plans to go live with it later this calendar year.

     

    Arré portrays a range of emotions; from the ‘surprised and the questioning’ to the ‘friendly thumbs up affirmative’ to ‘disagreement and protest’ to ‘Arré yaar!’ It crosses boundaries of language, audience groups and geographies. Arré  will be an original  content  destination  which will  be  a  unique  storytelling  platform  across  genres and formats.   

     

    Arré will express itself across mediums, from text to graphic art to podcasts and video in multiple genres such as reality and fiction, factual and opinionated as well as pure entertainment. It is working with collaborators across the spectrum in developing original content;   from   writers,   artists,   journalists   and   storytellers   to   independent   filmmakers, established production houses as well as upcoming talent in fiction, reality and non-fiction genres.

     

    UDigital, managing  director B Saikumar said,  “Arré  was  born  out  of  the  need  to  create  a  truly  disruptive  digital  product.  Our  philosophy  is  to  continuously  challenge  the ‘moulds’ of format, media and structure to create content that is reflective of good storytelling in a digital environment. Much like the name, we hope to make Arré, the brand, a part of daily conversation in India and globally!”  

     

     The word Arré is one of the most commonly spoken Indian colloquial term which signifies ‘Hey’. While its origins are in Hindi, it is an expression that’s not only understood throughout the length and breadth of the country but has also been included in the Oxford dictionary of the English language, as an ‘all purpose Indian-English interjection’.

     

     The accent on the é in Arré is reflective of the varied expressions and emotions that the brand will straddle, as well as its international outlook. 

     

    The logo and visual identity of Arré is being designed and developed by AREA 17, an interactive agency based in Paris and New York. AREA 17 has an acclaimed body of work on international brands in media such as Vice, Quartz, The Atlantic, Style.com, Facebook, Pinterest and more.

  • HBO and Vice enter major news content deal

    HBO and Vice enter major news content deal

    MUMBAI: Home Box Office and Vice have inked a major news partnership that will significantly expand Vice’s Emmy-winning news programming to HBO subscribers over the next four years.

     

    In its most expansive programming deal ever, HBO will dramatically increase the network’s current events coverage, bringing Vice’s brand of high-impact journalism and breaking news content to subscribers in a wide-range of formats, including: 

     

    1) The Vice daily newscast: The launch of a daily Vice newscast, consisting of five half-hour shows per week, 48 weeks a year.

     

    2) The weekly series on HBO: A four-year extension (with an increase from 14 to 35 episodes a year) of the Emmy-winning documentary show.

     

    3) Vice specials: A four-year commitment for an increased number of Vice-produced specials, totaling 32 through 2018.

     

    Additionally, a Vice-branded channel on the HBO NOW streaming service will provide instant access to Vice content for all HBO subscribers.

     

    “Shane and the Vice team have produced some of the most groundbreaking and dynamic journalism anywhere. From the front lines in the Ukraine, to the icebergs of Antarctica and the streets of Ferguson, Vice news has helped illuminate and expand our understanding of an increasingly complex world. This extension of the HBO/Vice relationship, which will include more shows, more documentaries and even a Vice daily newscast, is a natural evolution of our partnership. All of us at HBO couldn’t be more excited working with the Vice team and helping to tell the stories which define our world,” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler and HBO Programming president Michael Lombardo.

     

    Vice founder and CEO Shane Smith added, “I think the first thing, perhaps the hardest thing, I learned about journalism over the past 20 years is that maintaining any type of independence, any type of freedom, is difficult as you scale up. This deal, simply put, allows Vice the freedom to go after any story, anywhere we find it – and to do so with complete independence. This deal is a tremendous gift and a tremendous opportunity, and we at Vice realize this. Together with HBO, we will expand our news offerings to viewers everywhere, creating HBO’s first-ever daily newscast, producing hard-hitting specials, like our recent Special Report on cancer, and expanding our weekly news round-ups from around the world. Over the the last few years, our relationship with HBO has morphed from a great business partnership into a transformative brand-builder. This groundbreaking deal will create a new voice in news.”

     

    The partnership builds off the success of the current Vice series on HBO, which received a Primetime Emmy in the category of Outstanding Informational Series or Special last August, and has quickly become an alternative voice and source for unvarnished documentary-style news. Currently debuting editions Friday nights on HBO, the Vice weekly series is dedicated to exploring today’s most pressing issues from around the globe, from civil unrest and hotbeds of terrorism, to unchecked government corruption, lawless borders and looming environmental catastrophes.

     

    The newscast will feature the original on-the-ground reporting viewers expect from Vice, but in a daily format. Vice will draw on its network of more than 30 global bureaus to bring viewers inside the world’s most critical stories.

     

    The slate of 32 specials will offer viewers in-depth examinations of pressing topics, just as Vice has done with recent specials exploring the use of deadly viruses to fight cancer and climate change affecting the West Antarctic ice sheet.