in june 2016, shane smith announced at the cannes lions festival that vice media had reached deals with local broadcasters to expand into 44 countries with the launch of editorial properties and localized viceland networks, including the special broadcasting service (australia), econet media (sub-saharan africa), the times group (india), moby media group (middle east), multi channels asia (southeast asia), sky network television (new zealand), v media group (canada, french-language), ziggo (netherlands) and telenet (belgium).