CANNES — Vice Media execs left a roomful of media and ad execs hanging on Wednesday when they dodged questions about Time Warner’s interest in buying a stake in the burgeoning digital media outfit.
DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg put Vice’s chief creative officer, Eddy Moretti, on the spot during a talk at the Cannes Lions advertising festival when he pressed him on negotiations with the media giant.
“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Moretti said, adding: “Are there any Time Warner people here? There should be.”
Katzenberg continued to prod him and even joked about a three-way tie-up with his studio.
“Eddy and [Vice CEO] Shane Smith are negotiating to buy Time Warner, hoping they’ll find a place for DreamWorks in their new empire,” Katzenberg quipped.
Time Warner is in talks to pay $1 billion for a 50 percent stake in the youth-centric news and entertainment operation focused on digital delivery, according to several reports.
The talks may involve rebranding CNN’s sibling HLN to give it more youthful appeal.
Time Warner-owned HBO already airs Vice programming. Moretti said the success of Vice, which gathers international news from war zones among other efforts, is due to the audience’s involvement in creating the content.
“This generation isn’t tuning into CNN,” he said, noting that Vice’s coverage of the Russian incursion into Ukraine attracted 50 million views.
Vice counts a number of minority shareholders among its backers, including 21st Century Fox, advertising behemoth WPP and former Viacom chief Tom Freston.