Vice Media has teamed up with production company FremantleMedia to launch ‘Munchies’ an online TV channel devoted to food, with a youth twist.
The food platform features a raft of original video content, editorial features, articles, how-to guides, recipes and events.
The shows are aimed at audiences from 18 to 34 years old, which the partners believe have been ignored by mainstream producers and broadcasters of food shows.
Launched at a press briefing in Cannes, initially shows include Being Frank, Munchies: Chef’s Night Out, Fresh Off The Boat, Girl Eats Food (pictured above) and F*ck That’s Delicious.
“People ask us all the time Four of the shows are presenter led: “Being Frank” is delivered by two restaurant owners from Queens, New York, Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo; “Fresh Off the Boat” is fronted by Taiwanese-American hip-hop aficionado Eddie Huang; “Girl Eats Food” is hosted by British food fantasist Joanna Fuertes-Knight; and “F*ck, That’s Delicious” is presented by chef turned rapper Action Bronson.
Vice chief creative officer Eddie Moretti added that Munchies would be “available at all time on all platforms,” and Keith Hindle, CEO of FremantleMedia’s digital and branded entertainment division, said that his company would collate Munchies short form content into half-hour packages, to be sold to TV channels around the world. The titles will target an 18-34 demo.
Hindle said: “In TV it is increasingly hard for us and anybody else to launch new content on television that attracts a younger demo. When you see a new show launching on television networks around the world, look at the young demo that they have attracted and very often it is lower than the show that it replaced in that time slot in the 18-34 demo. VICE have been very successful at attracted that young demo to the new content they have launched.”
Eddy Moretti, VICE chief creative officer, said that mainstream producers of food programming have not served the youth demo well. “TV missed the boat on this kind of content because they didn’t turn over their development machinery to these kids,” he said. “There’s a changing of the guard.”