Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Group, storied entertainment powerhouse Disney and cult hit factory HBO have all tipped money into the business, which most recently was valued at $US5.7 billion ($7.2 billion). It is the biggest and most valuable member of a new wave of start-ups (peers include BuzzFeed and Vox Media) that looked like they were forging a new path forward for the beaten and battered media business. So Vice's recent setbacks, including sexual harassment claims and a class action lawsuit, sent shockwaves across the media world, and were certainly felt in Australia. "SBS has sought further information from Vice and has been assured that any claims are being fully addressed,’ a spokesperson said last week. Vice, which covers provocative topics, and has won multiple Emmy awards for its documentaries, has forged a distinctive and edgy video style. (It makes money from ads for brands which mimic this style).

But like other high flying start-ups (cough Uber) it seems to have significant cultural problems. Last week, Vice was hit with a class action lawsuit in the US claiming systematic pay discrimination against female workers. Just before Christmas, a seismic New York Times report alleging sexual harassment at the company resulted in Vice's president and chief digital officer being suspended. And last September, a former Vice editor from Canada was named in a Sydney court as the alleged leader of a drug smuggling ring. The company has announced a series of measures to improve what it described as a "boy's club" culture, including a pay parity audit and establishing a diversity advisory board.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Vice would fall short of its revenue targets in 2017 by $US100 million. It attributed the miss to poor performance of Viceland, the US cable channel it launched in mid 2016 with decorated Hollywood auteur Spike Jonze as creative director. Viceland is the brand SBS adopted for its second channel in 2016, as part of an output deal, that sees Vice's content and brand pumped into all Australian homes with a broadcast signal. SBS has always insisted the content it gets from Vice satisfies its charter, which includes diversity requirements, and is vague enough to be open to interpretation. The deal is also financially attractive (i.e cheap) for the public broadcaster which is, to some extent, between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, its funding has been cut; on the other it is attacked for raising money through advertising.

Regardless, Vice always looked like a unusual partner for a progressive broadcaster like SBS. Its founder Shane Smith, now on paper a billionaire, is regarded as one of the most colourful figures in US media, and is known for his hard partying ways. He reportedly won $1 million playing blackjack at a casino in Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show tech convention. And then spent $300,000 of that on a raucous steak dinner (a piece of folklore that made it into a corporate earnings call). But Smith’s latest big bet, that Viceland would get millennials to return to TV, increasingly looks like it won’t pay off. It's not just the US where Viceland appears to have fallen short of expectations. In Canada, broadcaster Rogers recently terminated its own Viceland deal that is similar to the SBS arrangement. Ratings can be sliced and diced any number of ways, but analysis obtained by Fairfax suggests SBS Viceland is tracking below its predecessor SBS2 on a number of measures.

Primetime audiences in the mainland capitals fell 4 per cent between August and November last year, compared to the same period in 2016 - the last months for SBS2. In the key 16-39 demographic they fell 14 per cent over that period. In all of 2017, SBS Viceland's ratings among youth audiences slipped 7 per cent, although that was actually not as steep a fall as experienced by the entire free to air TV market (14 per cent). SBS said January was the strongest month for the SBS Viceland since launch, but declined to provide specific numbers. Terms of the SBS-Vice deal have never been disclosed, and last week both sides affirmed their commitment to the deal. SBS Viceland's comedy show Adam Ruins Everything.