Sky's Ian King says Vice, which is set to fall into the hands of its creditors, did not get to grips with the changing needs of its audience.
The most eye-catching investments, though, were made by Disney, which put in around $400m, most of it in 2015 and 2016. It eventually emerged with a 26% stake in the business whose value it wrote down to zero in 2019.
The most obvious factor that hurt all of these businesses was a shift in the market that saw the lion's share of digital advertising revenues vacuumed up by the likes of Google and Facebook.They opted instead for alternative platforms like TikTok and Snap. It is thought that Gen Z audience, rather more clean-living - some would say puritanical - than the Millennials, were repelled by aspects of Vice.
The company became locked into a spiral of staff redundancies, followed by more declines in audience, followed by more redundancies. Costs were cut aggressively - even the Old Blue Last was sold - but profits remained stubbornly unattainable and particularly after the constraints of operating during the pandemic took a toll.
Business Insider and Politico, two more digital news start-ups that successfully built strong reputations, have been bought by another established media player in Axel Springer, owner of Bild and Die Welt, two of Germany's best-selling newspapers. The Boston Globe has begun trading profitably since being bought by John Henry, the owner of Liverpool FC, thanks to some buoyant digital subscription revenues. And in the UK, The Times is making a sustained profit for the first time since it was bought by Mr Murdoch in 1981, again driven by strong digital subscriptions and award-winning journalism.
The Washington Post, which has been owned by Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos for a decade, has been laying off staff and is widely reported to be up for sale after suffering falls in both circulation and subscription revenues.
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