M-Net (DStv 101) is substantially beefing up its slate of premium current affairs programming, adding the news magazine series Vice to the pay-TV broadcaster's programming line-up from Sunday 6 July at 22:40.
After dismantling and removing documentaries and its documentary strand for its schedule half a decade ago, M-Net is for the first time increasing its current affairs programming beyond its sole, and longrunning current affairs timeslot and news magazine show Carte Blanche on Sunday nights at 19:00.
After acquiring the broadcasting rights for Vice, the pay-TV broadcaster is now adding it to the Sunday night line-up as well as a well-suited late night complement to the earlier Carte Blanche.
The provocative and successful Vice which was just renewed for a third (longer) and a fourth season in America on HBO has Shane Smith as presenter as well as various other correspondents who cover startling and groundbreaking stories from around the world, told in immersive, documentary style stories.
South African viewers will see Vice cover topics ranging from child suicide bombers in Asia, North Korea, guns in America, China's ghost towns, climate change, desperate bachelors in China, post-war toxic waste in Iraq, underground heroin clinics, fat farms in Mauritania and even "slumscrapers" (the poor living in appalling conditions in high rise Mumbai skyscrapers) - and that's just the first season.
"The success of Vice proves that people are hungry to be engaged in world events when the storytelling is not packaged into sound bites," says the show in a statement following its renewal two weeks ago in America, calling Vice a "smart, honest, in-depth approach to news coverage".
"We promise to report on the under reported, to tell the forgotten stories and to remain committed to uncovering the truth about our planet in peril," said the show.
The addition of Vice to the M-Net schedule follows the pay-TV broadcaster's equally quick and clever grab in April of the new and intelligent weekly late night talker, Last Week with John Oliver, also shown on Sunday nights.
