Fans of Vice Media’s edgy programming will have to wait to get a look at its much-anticipated nightly news show on the HBO network. The show, Vice News Tonight, was supposed to hit the airwaves on Sept. 26, but the company said Tuesday that the premiere has been postponed.
The new air date for the half-hour program, which Vice says will take an alternative approach to covering the news, is October 10.
Josh Tyrangiel, who was hired away from Bloomberg Media to run the new venture, said at a press conference on Tuesday that the delay was driven by a desire to “test it on all its various platforms and make sure it’s perfect.”
Vice screened a prototype of the new show, which it says is aimed at a millennial audience that has “grown increasingly skeptical of daily broadcast news.”
According to Tyrangiel, the approach Vice is taking with the anchor-less newscast falls somewhere in between a traditional news program and something like Comedy Central’s Daily Show. It was also inspired by Sesame Street and other similar shows, he said.
Vice has said the news show will combine elements of its existing weekly HBO program, which airs mini-documentaries on a variety of topics, as well as some high-tech interactive elements including graphics and animation.
The channel is also going after a digital audience as well: When users watch the program on a cellphone or tablet, the show will include touchscreen-style features that allow them to pull up related documents, links, and additional extras.
The prototype that Vice screened Tuesday included segments such as “Road to Mosul,” in which a correspondent files live footage from Iraq, a feature on Fentanyl called “America’s Deadliest New Drug,” and a segment on emojis.
Tyrangiel said the show would focus on topics such as civil rights, national security, climate and the environment, as well as cyber security and popular culture both domestically and in other countries. And it will make use of Vice’s expertise in covering war, he said. “We do war really well. We’re really good at empathy.”
