TALKING SHOP: Shane Smith, founder and CEO of Vice Media, discusses how the cutting edge youth brand is succeeding to tap into the millennial generation that TV is increasingly struggling to reach.
C21's Talking Shop is a daily strand on C21Media.net that goes behind the news to talk to leading players in the international content business.
Smith expands on the company’s recent collaboration with FremantleMedia on video-driven, food-focused online destination Munchies and how the two parties will work together to devise new formats with potential TV crossover.
“We are the most democratic video-sharing platform in the world. We learned what our audience was like and we learned what their consumer habits were, we learned what content they like,” he says.
“What’s happening now is there’s a changing of the guard in media. Peripheral companies like Vice are all of a sudden becoming mainstream.”
Smith discusses Vice’s alliances with HBO in the US, Sky in Mexico, Europe and India, and Antenna Group in Greece, as well as the company’s recent investment from 21st Century Fox.
“Everyone’s trying to go from TV to online and if that’s the question then they’re already dead because it’s actually mobile now. If you’re trying to get to online you’re already one iteration behind,” says Smith.
