Vice Media joins streaming gold rush in new bid for profitability

Vice Media joins streaming gold rush in new bid for profitability

Vice Media, the youth-focused news and entertainment group, has launched a free-to-watch online television channel to capitalise on the boom in streaming as it makes a new push to achieve the steady profitability that has eluded it.

The channel, a live feed of nonfiction shows such as Needles & Pins, a docu-series about tattoo culture, becomes available on the Roku online TV platform in the US from Tuesday, just as the company markets itself to potential investors ahead of a planned stock market listing.

As investors’ ardour for digital publishers has cooled, Vice executives have repositioned their company as an entertainment group and television production studio — a sector that has been swimming in money as streaming services like Netflix shop for programming. 

“We’re laser focused on growth, and as we see this exploding ecosystem,” said Jesse Angelo, the former New York Post chief executive who runs Vice’s news and entertainment business. “We are going to take advantage.”

Once heralded as the future of publishing during a digital advertising boom, a generation of venture-capital backed companies like Vice have struggled to establish a sustainable business model.

Angelo rejected the comparison of Vice to groups like BuzzFeed that came to prominence around the same time.

“There is a