Article content

It was 4 p.m. on a Monday, and it was already gridlock on the Williamsburg Bridge — heading out of Manhattan. Heading into Manhattan, it was smooth sailing.

“I like the reverse commute a lot,” Suroosh Alvi, 46, said, ashing his cigarette out the window of his Audi. “Living in the city, working in Brooklyn, you’re always going against traffic.”

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or How a little magazine called VICE conquered the media world: Welcome to Viceland Back to video

The observation could be Alvi’s career motto. We had just left the Brooklyn offices of VICE Media, the company he founded as a Montreal magazine in 1994 through a welfare pay program, currently valued at more than $4 billion.

It’s been a wild ride, filled with ups, downs, reversals of fortune and dramatic twists. Around the corner is VICE’s biggest coup yet: On Monday, it launches its own TV channel, Viceland, as part of Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Corp.’s A&E Network in the U.S., and on Rogers in Canada.

Money has been raining down on VICE for the past few years: Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox put up $70 million for five per cent of the company in 2013; A&E and Technology Crossover Ventures contributed $250 million each for 10-per-cent portions in 2014, and A&E has since upped its share to approximately 15 per cent. In the fall, Disney pumped in $400 million for a reported 10-per-cent share.