VICE - Digital Bad Boys

Digitals bad boy heads to prime-time news

- Chris Ip

On the first Friday in May, a line of advertising and media people stretched down New York’s West 22nd Street, waiting to hear from Shane Smith, the 45-year-old bearded and bearish co-founder of Vice. One of the media world’s most flamboyant CEOs had an announcement to make. The occasion was the Digital Content NewFronts, a corporate event where media companies parade upcoming digital programming before advertisers. While some ceos came in button-downs and blazers, Smith wore a black T-shirt, a tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve.

In a rollicking, obscenity-laced presentation featuring Oscar-nominated filmmaker and Vice creative director Spike Jonze, Smith unveiled a host of new lifestyle shows starring a who’s who of tastemakers for millennials. Marc Maron, the sardonic comedian who runs a popular podcast of celebrity one-on-ones, will have an interview show; Ellen Page, the actress from Inception and Juno who came out as gay last year, will host an lgbt travel show, “Gaycation.”

But unlike the bulk of Vice’s news and cultural programming, which runs online, the shows are expected to air on Vice’s new cable channel on a&e Networks, which paid a cool $250 million for a 10 percent stake in Vice last year. At the media industry’s premier digital advertising event, Vice’s big news sounded almost anachronistic: the plucky internet video mavericks were moving to cable.