As The Biography Channel Licensed as
The Biography Channel by the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on November 24, 2000; the channel was launched on September 7, 2001 as a joint venture between Rogers Media (33.34%),
Shaw Communications (33.33%) and
A&E Networks (33.33%)—who owned the network's
American counterpart. In 2006, both Shaw and A&E sold their interests in the channel to Rogers. The U.S. Biography Channel relaunched as
FYI on July 7, 2014; Shaw's
Twist TV became a Canadian version of FYI on September 1, 2014.
As Viceland On November 5, 2015, Rogers announced that it would serve as the Canadian partner for
Viceland, a new
millennial-focused channel programmed by
Vice Media, and that The Biography Channel would be rebranded to Viceland. Vice Media had partnered with A&E Networks (who owns 10% of the company) to launch Viceland in the U.S. as a replacement for
H2. Rogers and Vice Media had already begun to collaborate in October 2014, when Vice announced a CDN$100 million joint venture with Rogers to build a studio in
Toronto's
Liberty Village neighbourhood for producing original content. In 2015, Rogers-owned television network
City introduced
Vice on City—an anthology series featuring short-form content produced by Vice's Canadian reporters. Vice Media was originally established in
Montreal, but had moved to
New York City due to difficulties in reaching a sufficient
scale in Canada at the time. The company believed that Rogers' investment in Vice helped to better achieve these goals. In November 2017,
The Globe and Mail reported that Rogers intended to cease providing funding to Viceland in early 2018, citing inside reports of low viewership and unprofitability. Representatives of both companies to declined to comment. On January 22, 2018, Rogers and Vice jointly announced a termination of their partnership. The channel shut down on March 31, 2018, and its licence was revoked by request of Vice Network Canada on April 1. Immediately after that, the channel space that was created by The Biography Channel in 2001 simply ceased to exist. Vice will inherit complete ownership of the Toronto studio. Several small providers replaced it with
FX, giving it wider distribution. On August 16, 2018, Vice announced a long-term output deal with
Bell Media. Viceland was not relaunched, but the new deal saw its content dispersed across some Bell-owned services such as
MTV,
Much, and
Crave. == Programming ==