VICE Has Been CANCELED, Mass Layoffs Hit Company. About 250 people are expected to lose their jobs starting today which is about ten percent of VICE media's workforce.This comes almost immediately after Buzzfeed and Huffington Post laid off significant portions of their staff. For VICE The news is particularly bad as they have had their flagship show "VICE" canceled from HBO.Far left, ragebait, "super woke" content doesn't seem to work in the long run and many of these companies are looking to reduce staff in particular areas. Vice will see layoffs affect every division of the company however, not just digital media.
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Vice Media has just announced they'll be laying off 10% of their workforce, or around 250 people.
And this comes almost immediately after we saw BuzzFeed, AOL, Yahoo, and the Huffington Post lay off hundreds of employees as well.
This may be one of the worst couple of weeks in the history of digital media.
Now, there are many reasons why this is happening.
For one, these companies ran primarily off of investment, and when those investors stopped coming in, they couldn't expand, and then they had to fire people.
Another reason is that they were writing algorithms.
They were manipulating Facebook and YouTube to try and bring in those views and make money.
And once the algorithms changed, they couldn't bring in traffic anymore, and then they had to fire people.
Those of us in digital who got out of these companies kind of knew this was going to happen.
In fact, Shane Smith said in 2016 there would be a bloodbath in digital media.
And I have reason to believe that these companies knew they were failing for years and just tried to stem the bleed with some nefarious practices.
Today, let's take a look at the latest news from Vice News, and then I want to explain to you how I kind of knew this was going to happen, and why what they're doing may actually be a bit nefarious.
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From The Hollywood Reporter, Vice Media to reorganize.
Lay off 10% of staff.
The story starts, Vice is planning a reorganization that will include laying off about 10% of its workforce as the once high-flying startup looks to reign in an unwieldy business that grew quickly during the height of the digital boom.
Around 250 jobs are expected to be cut, a company spokeswoman tells The Hollywood Reporter, as the 2,500-person Vice reduces redundancies internationally and reorients to focus on growth areas like film and television production and branded content.
All departments at every level are expected to have layoffs from IT to finance to television.
As part of the changes Dubik laid out for staff on Friday, Vice will restructure its global workforce from one siloed by each international office into one built around its five business priorities going forward.
Film and TV production unit studios, its international news team, the digital business, the TV operation fueled by Vice's relationship with HBO, and ad agency Virtue, administrative or support functions like human resources, legal, and business development, will report to Vice's Brooklyn headquarters or a regional hub.
Employees affected in the US, UK, and Canada are expected to be notified today.
The remainder of the cuts will take place over the coming weeks.
Vice, whose employees recently ratified new contracts via WGA East will pay out employee paid time off and 10 weeks
of severance and medical benefits in the US Global separation packages will vary based on the country
the Wall Street Journal adds to the story saying the company's weekly show on HBO called vice and
Long its most high-profile brand flagship will also be ending though
The Daily News show will continue some staff from the weekly show will be redeployed into new documentary
products according to one of the people So it's not that these companies are going to cease to exist.
If you've been following my videos over the past week or so, you'll know that BuzzFeed is selling cookware, two brands.
One is called Goodful, which they sell online, and another is called Tasty, which they sell at Walmart.
So they've certainly found ways to monetize, though that's not really a media business.
Vice, on the other hand, has been moving into television and film, which they've been doing for a long time.
Now, there is reason to believe these companies knew this was going to happen, especially Mike.com, because they've been engaging in something that I believe is kind of nefarious for some time.
Back in 2016, we saw this story from Variety, Vice Media Traffic Plummets Underscoring Risky Web Strategy.
They said, the irreverent content brand saw its web traffic suddenly plunge 17.4%, compared with the previous month, according to multi-platform figures just released by Comscore for February, registering 49.1 million unique visitors.
That's down from 59.5 million in January.
No brand in Comscore's entertainment category dropped further than Vice during that period.
Reached for comment, a Vice spokesperson issued the following statement to Variety.
ComScore doesn't capture the entire universe of viewers consuming Vice content across all
screens and platforms. Since introducing new viewership products earlier this year,
overall audience size has continued to grow, with watch time at an all-time high.
The irony of what's propelling this precipitous decline is a controversial practice that Vice, as well as other digital publishers, engage in online that's actually aimed at inflating traffic numbers.
The inventory that Vice makes available to media buyers is actually a combination of its own website, vice.com, and a collection of other web properties Vice doesn't really own or operate, such as modernfarmer.com and thepladzebra.com.
ComScore enables this arrangement by allowing one publisher to essentially sign away its audience to another publisher through a document known as Traffic Assignment.
These packs are typically struck by smaller publishers lacking advertising sales infrastructure.
In exchange for turning over their traffic, they can have their inventory represented by a bigger entity with better access to a wider range of marketers.
But the strategy apparently backfired last month when the biggest booster of Vice Media's traffic, Distractify, suddenly experienced a meltdown after months of fairly consistent growth.
Distractify went into freefall in February versus the prior month, dropping a whopping 68%, from 15.7 million to just under 5 million.
Distractify's audience is built on the notoriously volatile traffic that comes from counting on clickbait content, like 13 Irish heartthrobs to satisfy all your St.
Paddy's Day needs.
on social networks with shifting algorithms.
A website riding high one month could find itself in a tailspin the next.
They buy the rights to traffic from small clickbait blogs.
They then add those numbers to their own and then go and claim the Vice Network is actually generating 50 million views when in reality they're probably generating 20 to 25 and they've bought another 25.
A couple years ago, a source told me that one of these big media brands, who I'm not going to name for legal reasons, was trying to purchase the rights to clickbait blogs so they could attract investors.
Otherwise, they would fail.
They eventually ended up laying off their staff and selling.
They knew they had to engage in this practice to make it seem like they were more successful than they really were if they wanted to continue to grow.
So think about that.
They bring in investors even though they know they aren't growing and can't pay their staff.
When those investors stop coming, they have to fire everyone they hired.
It just doesn't work.
Growth cannot be infinite.
The story says Distractify, which Vice has partnered with since last July, isn't the only source of inflation that has been deflating either.
Several other websites Vice just recently added to its traffic-padded portfolio early this year are experiencing significant declines as well.
But how about we take a look at that one more time?
Modernfarmer.com, the plaid zebra?
January to 19.2 million as well as smaller drops from split cider.com and
the all but how about we take a look at that one more time modernfarmer.com the plaid zebra anybody who paid attention
to these things years ago would know this was inevitable these companies aren't
actually growing It's just a trick.
It's smoke and mirrors.
Vice, at least, was smart about it.
They used this investment to move into other areas where they could actually grow.
When I worked at Vice, there was constantly talk about a cable channel.
And no one really understood why they would want to have a cable channel, because cable is old school, and of course cable is dying out, right?
Well, sort of.
My understanding is that they got a big contract for a long period of time that guaranteed income.
And the reality is, they were buying other people's traffic to make it seem like their traffic was actually higher than it really was.
You might think you're buying Vice Media Group traffic, which is this luxury brand, this high-profile and cool brand, when in reality you're buying ModernFarmer.com ads For clickbait stories about Italian heartthrobs.
That's the big trick of the media industry.
Lying to people to make it seem like they're bigger than they really are.
What's really crazy about this is that my YouTube channels actually generate more traffic than many of these trash clickbait blogs and some of these massive 10, 20, 100 million dollar companies.
It blows my mind that they're able to pull this kind of thing off.
But I gotta say, from my history, In these companies and watching how they operate, I knew this was going to happen.
Why is it that I'm here on YouTube talking to you right now, successful, expanding, looking to launch Subverse?
It's because I saw the tricks.
I knew they weren't really growing.
But eventually, the house of cards is going to fall down.
There's nothing really there, and this is what happens.
A massive layoff.
But again, Vice was smart about it.
Shane Smith predicted this years ago.
In August 2016, Vice boss Shane Smith predicts bloodbath of media consolidation in 2017.
Well, there were layoffs in 2017 and 2018, and then we saw mass layoffs just at the beginning of the year.
It seems like at the beginning of the year, when the new budgets come in, they decide to cull many of their staff.
For instance, last January 2018, Vice Media cuts jobs after Canada TV deal ends.
In all, it was 23 employees, but still, around 10% of the workforce, I believe 10% of the workforce in Canada.
I don't want to say these companies aren't profitable.
That's not true.
They are profitable.
Vice is expected to bring in something like 500 to 600 million dollars, and we're looking at BuzzFeed bringing in I think like 300 million dollars.
So once they cut off all of this overgrowth, cut the fat essentially, they might actually find they have some profitable margins.
And maybe that was a strategy all along.
Grow as fast as you can, manipulate the market, and then once you find your cap, shave off the excess and go back to where you're actually sustainable.
I talked about this this morning on my second channel.
Fratboy Gawker owner ups bid for Gizmodo and Deadspin.
Yes, you may have heard that Gawker died a long time ago, but it's actually just hired some new staff and is preparing to relaunch, and now the guy who bought Gawker actually wants to buy up the other Gizmodo properties, which basically are the sites that were once part of the Gawker network.
This is the same guy that recently bought Mike.com after it laid off most of its staff and sold for a tiny fraction of its value.
I know some people who are high up in some of these companies who have expressed to me they knew buying the rights to clickbait blogs like Modern Farmer, whatever that is, was kind of a trick, but it was what they had to do to survive in a competitive market.
They knew.
Which means they knew they were living on borrowed time.
And that means everyone they hired and everyone who worked there, the bosses knew they'd be laid off.
And they did nothing.
They actually just kept playing the game, and then when the layoffs happened, they said, oops, we're so sorry this is happening.
It caught us by surprise and we have to do it.
No, not at all.
They knew what they were doing for years.
They were inflating their worth, they were acting like they were bigger than they really were, and they were trying to justify investment to hire more people for some reason.
I don't know why.
But at some point, it had to end.
And thus, many of these people are being laid off.
And it's unsurprising, then, that many of the people laid off by BuzzFeed, for instance, were marginalized voice writers.
People have pointed out that most of the layoffs were people of color and LGBTQ writers.
I gotta say, I'm not surprised.
Those are sub-subgroups, and they're probably hard to monetize.
And now these companies are gonna try and focus on I don't know why they would target the subcategories in the first place, but they did.
Didn't really work out.
I don't know why they would target the subcategories in the first place, but they did.
Didn't really work out.
I don't know what will happen next.
I do know we are seeing a dramatic shift in the media landscape.
This rage-bait cycle of manipulating people with activist posts probably is going to go
Facebook made changes to its algorithm, and now people aren't getting traffic on their posts anymore because Facebook wants more connections between friends and family and less from news organizations and businesses.
And we can see similar changes happening with Google's algorithm and YouTube.
There's no telling what the future holds.
But these companies were built off of algorithms and manipulation, and that eventually comes to an end.
So let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
I think Vice is going to continue to do really, really well.
They are.
But a lot of these companies are going to shift away from rage-bait and far-left nonsense, so maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this will calm people down and may start the end of the insane culture where we've been seeing, and this may actually strip power away from many people associated with the far-left and extremism.
But again, comment below, we'll keep the conversation going.
You can follow me on Mines at Timcast.
Stay tuned, new videos every day at 4 p.m.
And I'll have more videos on my second channel, youtube.com slash timcastnews, starting at 6 p.m.
