Vice signs platform deal with Canadian mobile giant

Fast-growing new media empire Vice announced a partnership Thursday with major Canadian broadcaster and cellular service provider Rogers to build an "ultra-modern media entity."
"Essentially we are building a content creation hub that will generate premium video for a cutting edge media company that will program -- simultaneously -- the holy trinity of convergence: mobile, online, and TV," Vice founder Shane Smith said in a statement.
The new Toronto studio starting next year will operate under Vice's creative direction, and produce news and entertainment for a segment of the population -- aged 18 to 34 years -- that has largely drifted from traditional media to smartphones, tablets and computers.
The Can$100 million joint venture will launch a new Vice television network in Canada, and the creation of daily "mobile blasts" of news for smartphone users, as well as scaled down versions of Vice's online environmental presentation "Toxic" and its cooking show.
Rogers is Canada's largest provider of wireless communications services and one of its top cable television and Internet providers.
Vice started as a punk magazine in Montreal in 1994 and grew into a New York-based guerrilla news and entertainment conglomerate with 36 offices around the world, that also boasts a record label, a feature film production studio and a book-publishing division.