Media giant Vice is headed for bankruptcy based on recent reports which state that the company is actively looking for a buyer.
“Vice Media Group has been engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of strategic alternatives and planning,” Vice said in a statement on Monday to the Times. “The company, its board, and stakeholders continue to be focused on finding the best path for the company.”
Vice has been around the media landscape for quite some time and they have had an impact on the overall media game since they have entered the space. For a company that started out as a Canadian alternative publication and later became a digital powerhouse that caters to a unique segment of the market that wants edgy investigative content, they have achieved a lot.
Prior to the announcement of Vice being up for sale, the company had a valuation of $5.7 billion. Currently, analysts are stating that the current figures are way below the last estimate.
Last week, the company announced it would cancel its flagship “Vice News Tonight” show and lay off dozens of employees amid a larger corporate restructuring, the latest in a bruising season of media layoffs that saw cuts at Insider, NPR, Paper magazine, and the demise of Buzzfeed News.
That follows reports that Vice got an emergency $30m in financing to pay off a growing number of debts. In February, Vice Media chief executive Nancy Dubuc left the company. The company fell short of a 2022 revenue goal by more than $100m, The Wall Street Journal reported in December.
The previous year, the company scuttled plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company.
The media game is going through a vast restructuring, it’s more of a disintegration, every day we are seeing new types of media being cropped up. All these smaller media outlets are taking away attention from the larger centralized medium. Additionally, they are also cheaper to produce and sometimes are of better quality.
