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)

NEW YORK—As Vice News seeks to bring a fresh take on the newscast format for HBO, its team of journalists and broadcasters are utilizing the Octopus 8 newsroom software for its Brooklyn, N.Y., headquarters.

Charged with sourcing from news facilities across the globe, the Octopus 8 system for Vice is working with Vizrt’s Viz Pilot graphics and Viz One asset manager units. This combination allows editors to select video material from Viz One and add graphics from Viz Pilot via a single interface. The Octopus 8 also has preconfigured commands from Viz Mosart into its story templates and story elements so as not to require plug-ins.

Available on Apple OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, the Octopus 8 allows newsrooms to ingest incoming audio, video and still-image files, news agency wires, RSS feeds, emails, SMS messages and faxes. As an MOS compliant system, it can be integrated into any environment that supports the MOS protocol. The Octopus 8 supports placeholder workflows, thumbnails and proxy preview, item status and channel assignments.

The Octopus 8 is a key piece of tech for Vice’s “Vice News Tonight,” which airs five nights a week on HBO.