trza
Well-known member
from polkitico
Smith is consistently bullish on the success of his company and said current metrics of his audience, which are usually around 150 million to 200 million total viewers and readers per month globally, underreports its actual reach. And though talks to take over HLN from Time Warner didn’t go through, Smith said that more television expansion is inevitable.
“Look, I’m sold out for eight months on all my online properties, and I doubled my rate card twice this year,” Smith said. “I need to get into TV just to have assets to sell my advertisements, let alone that I want more eyeballs and I want to create more content.”
Smith became even more bullish over criticisms leveled at his company, especially from the likes of Gawker, which has consistently knocked the company for reportedly paying low wages and editing for advertisers.
“I would ask you to look at the source, and there’s only one source for that, and why that question keeps coming up. It’s because it’s f---ing Gawker having sour grapes at being an also-ran,” Smith said, adding that Vice's average salary is $71,000 and its average age is 24.
If people are publishing criticisms, it means that Vice is at the top of its game, Smith said.
“We’re at the top of the mountain. Now we have to say, how do we have a better working model, how do we be better to our people, and not because we don’t want to have bad press, because we want to be a good company going forward. Those are the interesting issues of tremendous growth,” Smith said.
During the onstage conversation with Carney, Smith said old media are dying and companies like his are the new guard.
“There’s a changing of the guard every generation in media, and we’re a changing of the guard for generation Y,” Smith said.