Nine stands firm on deal with flagging Vice Media following US bankruptcy filing

Nine remains confident the Vice brand lives on in “rude health” in Australia and New Zealand, even as the US digital media company struggles to pay its bills and outstanding severance packages owed to recently laid-off staff.

Nine, which secured the licence for Vice and sister site Refinery29 in Australia through its youth publisher Pedestrian Group in 2021, on Wednesday ruled out any changes to its agreement with the US publisher as a result of Vice Media’s financial struggles.

Pedestrian Group, through a Nine spokesperson, wouldn’t be drawn on whether the company had made contact with Fortress Investment Group, the prevailing Vice Media bidder and lender set to acquire the former media darling out of bankruptcy since it beat out competing bidders with an offer of just US$350 million last month. In 2017, Vice secured a valuation of US$5.7 billion.

“Any [Vice Media Group] corporate issues are matters for them to comment on,” Pedestrian Group CEO Matt Rowley told Crikey in a statement.

Instead, the youth publisher pointed to the joy it’s had juicing the Vice brand in Australia and, more recently, New Zealand. Pedestrian Group set up shop with Vice across the Tasman earlier this year thanks to a deal with the New Zealand government’s Ministry of Social Development, which bankrolled Vice New Zealand’s editorial launch.

The advertising market in New Zealand has proven such a boon for Pedestrian Group’s Vice roll-out that it has recruited a new commercial boss to rally even more advertising buy-in.

For Vice Media in the US, however, the state of play is markedly different. The once-lauded US digital media company drew renewed criticism on Tuesday, following the publication of a bankruptcy filing that showed a string of executives had received more than US$1 million in performance bonuses, just weeks before the company filed for bankruptcy protection.

The payouts, first reported by Semafor, included a retention bonus of US$201,467 to the company’s executive VP Subrata De, a bonus of US$45,000 to chief operating officer Cory Haik, a bonus of US$99,000 to the company’s chief people officer Daisy Auger-Domínguez, and a payment of US$112,970 to co-CEO Bruce Dixon, among others, while many laid-off staff continue to await severance payouts and freelancers continue to chase money owed.

Struggling former Vice Media staff were left to raise funds via a GoFundMe page organised by the Vice Union, which managed to raise just over US$32,000. In a statement, the union said the bankruptcy filing showed Vice Media had been run aground as a result of rampant mismanagement and corporate greed.

“Vice Union raised $32,531 through that GoFundMe. If any of these executives donated to this GoFundMe, they did not do so under their own names. The top donation we received was $1500 — just a fraction of these bonuses,” the union said.

“Instead, less than 24 hours after those layoffs, these execs pocketed their money, like so many Vice executives have before them as they ran the company into the ground. We as a union cannot change any of that now. All we can say to these executives is: We see you.”

Vice Media has been contacted for comment. The company has publicly maintained that it intends to pay outstanding debts to former staff.

Vice Media’s public descent into bankruptcy began in early April, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, when the company was shopping around for a buyer willing to meet a valuation of around $400 million. In late June, Fortress would emerge as the most “qualified”.

As the early stages of that sale process played out, the embattled media darling moved to cut costs wherever it could, in a bid to stem the bleeding brought on by a soft advertising market and rising interest rates.

In late April, the company cut its flagship HBO TV news show, Vice News Tonight, and instigated company-wide layoffs that decimated its award-winning Vice World News vertical, shedding more than 100 jobs.

The job cuts battered Vice’s news operation, which once had correspondents stationed across the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, and even the Asia-Pacific, many of whom were assigned stories that otherwise slipped through the hands of local news organisations native to each market.

Beyond Nine, the Vice brand also lives on in Australia at SBS, where an active content-sharing agreement isn’t expected to suffer any near-term implications. The VICELAND channel launched by SBS in 2016 will continue to be curated by producers at the broadcaster, only now its programming will go to air without the axed Vice News Tonight.

“There are currently no impacts for SBS,” an SBS spokesperson told Crikey in a statement.

“The SBS VICELAND channel is a curated mix of programming including content SBS selects from Vice, alongside a range of other suppliers, and we have the flexibility to respond to programming and scheduling changes when needed.”