ATLANTA—Allen Media Group’s leading free streaming service Local Now has announced a deal with Vice Media Group that will add two Vice FAST channels to the Local Now free-streaming platform. 

As part of the agreement, Local Now viewers can now stream Vice News and Vice FAST, bringing more than 200 hours of programming to the Local Now platform.

Vice NEWS brings viewers its unique take on the news with bold, immersive, and fearless storytelling, while Vice FAST tells stories to spark curiosity and challenge assumptions through series covering culture, entertainment, food, tech and sports.

“We are excited to add the Vice News and Vice FAST channels to Local Now,” said Byron Allen, founder/chairman/CEO of Allen Media Group. “With the addition of these Vice Media Group channels, Local Now viewers now have even more award-winning news, culture, food, sports and entertainment content.”

Bea Hegedus, Vice Distribution’s executive managing director added that “We are delighted to partner with Byron Allen and his team at Local Now to bring our exceptional storytelling and youth-focused, award-winning content to their swiftly expanding platform and rapidly growing audiences. Their vision for local news, sports and entertainment strongly aligns with Vice’s mission to inform, define culture and always be at the forefront of cultural change.”

Local Now provides localized news, weather, sports, traffic, and entertainment, produced by various leading news organizations, in more than 225 markets across the U.S. It offers more than 450 free streaming channels, including a Local Now channel in every DMA in the country, as well as more than 19,000 movies, TV shows, and documentaries. The Local Now app is available on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Xfinity, Vizio, Samsung, Android and IOS devices. (www.LocalNow.com)

LAS VEGAS—Vice Media and Tata Communications struck a deal at April’s NAB Show that will have Tata building a cloud-based platform for global media asset management and distribution for Vice. Through this system, Vice production teams are expected to be able to capture content from anywhere and make it available to editors in production centers in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Toronto and London for publishing and broadcasting across Vice Media channels.

The new system will be based off Tata’s Media Ecosystem, which includes the Video Connect service. Video Connect complements Vice’s local area network and institutes a global area network of video contribution and IP connectivity. Offering speeds up to 10Gbps, Video Connect can transfer video files and remote collaboration between Vice Media teams.

The Media Ecosystem also comes with the IZO Cloud Storage to provide private cloud-based media storage for read-write access and archival of data-intensive video files. All Vice Media files, including videos in 4K, UHD and HD, are replicated in multiple private cloud locations in real-time for back-up and disaster recovery. Tata Communications has also integrated Vice’s media asset management and file acceleration tools into the platform.

MIAMI—Primestream recently supplied a content management and automation system to the digital media and broadcast company Vice Media. The newly installed system is designed to help Vice manage its workflows from program preparation to final distribution.

For Vice Media, the new Primestream system is required to integrate Vice’s existing workflow, which features third party systems for non-linear editing, production management systems, archival and delivery workflows. The system also had to be scalable for future growth of digital distribution, as well as the global launch of Viceland and the upcoming show “Vice News Tonight” on HBO.

To do this, Primestream designed a Dynamic Media Management system based around its Xchange platform. This enables Vice to access, publish and control content via its web interface and Fork automation platform. The production teams are able to manage the distribution of content to multiple platforms and screens.