IBC Executive
“The new battleground for news is authenticity,” declares Kevin Sutciffe, Head of News Programming Europe. “We're not shying away from the difficulties of reporting and we're prepared to show the harsher realities of events in a way that many regulated terrestrial broadcasters cannot.”
The battleground is also over viewers, in particular the Millennial generation, which the online upstart believes have been excluded from mainstream TV news agendas.
“We launched Vice News 18 months ago to turn the commonly held misconception - that 18-35 year olds are not interested in news and current affairs - on its head,” he says. “Vice is a response to something that worked well but has now become stuck and is not serving a part of an audience which is mobile, online and wanting a fresh approach.”
Sutcliffe, who has previously described BBC journalism as “beige”, doesn't come across as confrontational to the TV news establishment. He is after all a serial (Bafta and Emmy) award winning documentary maker and former Deputy Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4 and Senior Producer at the BBC's Panorama programme.
“TV reporting hasn't changed in 20-30 years and rolling news is a very tired format,” he says. “It is journalism fitted around the demands of the system. Our approach is to be honest. We recognise the world is very difficult to define and report so we have different lengths of film and immersive first person journalism which tries to tell the story as we find it and not package it down into 3 minutes bites.”
With reportage about the coup in Mali, the Ukraine conflict and, most notoriously, a documentary which embedded a team with Islamic State, Vice News has become the fastest growing such channel on YouTube, gaining 1.45 million subscribers, 350 million video views and high engagement on Facebook.
“News doesn't break in the newsroom,” says Sutcliffe. “It breaks on Twitter. Our films are made by journalists the same age as our audience and they are all switched onto social media to engage more deeply with stories.”
'Old' media investors have lined up to grab a slice of this hot property. WPP, Fox and Disney/Hearst-owned network A+E Networks have taken stakes in the group which began as a punk magazine in Montreal in 1994, valuing it over $2.5 billion and fuelling speculation of an IPO.
Characterised by Vice founder Shane Smith as “the CNN of the street”, its most recent deal saw Vice extend a deal with HBO to produce a daily news programme and have its own branded channel on the HBO Now streaming service.
“If we're going to make a scheduled TV news show how are we going to not make it like everyone else?” questions Sutcliffe. “We're spending a lot of time thinking and planning that now to try and capture the tone of what we do online.
“The notion of whether news should be emotional is worth exploring,” he suggests. “Our audience is intelligent. They know where to look for stories. They resist the patronising view of some broadcasters where stories are told in the round and everyone has a say. Our approach is to challenge the older models and say that there isn't one way of reporting a story accurately.”
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