Adam Stotsky, a longtime NBCUniversal executive, has taken the helm at Vice Media and plans to lead a turnaround focused on the embattled media conglomerate’s studio and advertising divisions, according to a report on Monday.
Under his lead, the counterculture media group will focus on its original documentaries, dramas and podcasts – like its popular British crime drama “Gangs of London” or film “Bama Rush” about the sorority recruitment process at the University of Alabama.
The focus is on “storytelling that can build a long-term, profitable and sustainable media brand in today’s landscape,” Stotsky told the Wall Street Journal.
Bruce Dixon, who served as chief executive at Vice since February 2023, will leave the company.
He executed layoffs and focused on cutting costs during his time at Vice, which was acquired by Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management after it filed for bankruptcy in 2023.
Dixon last year announced plans to stop publishing content on Vice.com and sell assets like Refinery29, its media site geared toward young women, and British fashion magazine i-D.
“A lot of the sort of messy stuff has been cleaned up,” Stotsky told the Journal.
Now Vice, which was founded in 1994, is profitable and looking to transform its studio business into a major revenue stream, according to Michael Lang, Vice’s executive chairman and president of Lang Media Group.
Stotsky has spent about three decades working in entertainment television, serving as chief marketing officer at NBCUniversal and later as president of Esquire Network and then E! Entertainment.
More recently, he led Dick Clark Productions, which is now owned by Penske Media, and helped Religion of Sports, the sports media venture founded by Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and Gotham Chopra, raise $50 million in an equity round.
That doesn’t mean Vice expects smooth-sailing from here on out.
“It’s going to be really tough for us to compete against Instagram, TikTok and YouTube,” Lang told the Journal.
“So we’re going to create great content for digital platforms, but we’re not going to be in the digital platform business itself.”
The CEO shake-up follows the hiring of Amy Powell, a former Amazon and Paramount executive, to serve as president of Vice Studios.
The company also plans to expand its Virtue ad agency’s presence in Europe and focus on news podcasts, like “Shane Smith Has Questions,” hosted by Vice co-founder Shane Smith.
Vice has also pushed several new sports series, like “Calipari: Razor’s Edge,” a partnership with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions about basketball coach John Calipari’s first season at the University of Arkansas.
It has a new series expected to launch this September called “NFL Playback,” which adds fresh commentary from celebrities and players, like Manning, to classic games.