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It’s No Blip, Online Video Is Taking Ad Dollars From Traditional TV: Analyst

September 16, 2014September 16, 2014 Ellen

9/2/2014 Deadline

The debate is over, or should be, MoffettNathanson Research’s Michael Nathanson says this morning: Advertisers are shifting spending to online video at the expense of traditional TV programming that isn’t “essential” — meaning live sports and events, hit scripted shows, and cable shows that appeal to hard-to-reach audiences. Even with a flood of political ads coming over the next few months, Nathanson just lowered his 2014 ad forecast for national broadcast TV to +2% from +5%, and for national cable to +5% from +6%.

Many media CEOs dismissed the weak ad trends in the first half of this year, blaming the Winter Olympics in Q1 or the World Cup, which peaked in July during Q3. CBS chief Les Moonves, for one, said that he’s “now seeing pacing improve significantly here in Q3, both nationally and locally, and Q4 will be even better than Q3.” The industry view is that traditional TV ad sales will pick up again as Nielsen improves its ability to measure online viewers. In June RBC Capital Markets’ David Bank also downplayed the digital threat, noting that only about 16% of the online video ad inventory accompanies content that would be suitable for a network TV advertiser.

But Nathanson says that he was “shocked” to see that online accounted for 98% of the growth in total ad spending in Q2 vs the period last year. “This is the largest contribution to growth since 2008 when online was growing in the face of a declining traditional ad market.” Ad spending for broadcast TV fell 4.7% in Q2 which reveals “the weak underlying non-sport advertising trends,” he says. While cable networks were up 3.6%, “only Disney ended up beating our estimates thanks in part to the strength of the World Cup on ESPN.”

Some of the recent weakness was due to Hollywood itself: Faced with anemic summer box office sales “film studios have kept a tighter leash on marketing spend,” the analyst says. The number of movie-related spots was down 10% in June and 24% in July, according to TiVo data.

Still, Nathanson says that execs should expect “a continued shift in TV [ad] budgets towards online video and display.” For 2015 — which won’t have an Olympics or major elections — he expects total TV ad sales to fall 0.3% with local stations -5.0%, the Big 4 broadcast networks -3.0%, national cable nets +5.0%, local cable -1.0%, and syndication (which includes WB, CW, and MyNetwork TV) flat.

http://deadline.com/2014/09/tv-advertising-online-taking-dollars-827634/

Has Crackle Cracked the Code For Over-The-Top Content Companies?

September 15, 2014September 15, 2014 Ellen

9/14/2014 Deadline

by David Bloom

Crackle, once an odd bird among the flock of startups in the emerging world of online video, finally seems to be flying in the right direction. Crackle’s timing couldn’t be better, as consumer frustration grows over cable and other pay-TV providers. Suddenly, more people are getting their TV-like entertainment experiences in new ways, and are expecting increasingly high-quality material when they go there.

Crackle started early in the last decade as a stand-alone company called Grouper. Sony bought Grouper for $65 million in 2006, and a year later, renamed and refocused it into something like what it what it is now, a free, ad-supported channel of what looks like traditional TV, though technically, it isn’t.

The original approach – featuring lots of not-very-distinguished action films and TV shows culled from the deep recesses of Sony’s library – has evolved in the years since. Now the company is, as CEO Eric Berger says, “both a studio and a network,” mixing library TV shows and films with original content and editorial material about that content from Sony’s huge TV production operations and other providers such as Lionsgate, Fox, MGM, Universal, Snag Films and Toei.

“Think of it as a network that’s not that dissimilar to an FX,” Berger said. “We layer original programming over library content.”

The programming, per its roots, has “a male sensibility, international in flavor,” said Berger. The site does do a couple of things differently from a traditional TV network, however. For one, it’s only available “over the top,” the buzzword du tech for video sources that are distributed through platforms such as the Web, mobile apps, and TV-side streaming devices such as videogame consoles, Roku and Apple TV.

And the shows themselves can be released in a variety of ways, in clumps for the binge watchers out there, or on a weekly schedule. They may be a standard 22 or44 minutes long, or just a 2-minute video snack, like their award-winning series from Jerry Seinfeld, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Berger is discreet, to the point of vague, about the company’s financial picture, and it’s not broken out separately in Sony’s financial reporting. But he does say, “We’re very happy with the financials for us. We’re a meaningful part of Sony Pictures TV‘s business. TV is not going away, but OTT is a meaningful new part of that business.”

It may soon become even more meaningful. Months and months of executives’ hints at investor conferences and media reports say Sony is close to launching an Internet-based pay-TV service as an alternative to traditional cable TV.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Sony has finalized a deal to carry more than 20 of Viacom’s channels, including MTV and Nickelodeon, as one bulwark of the new service. Fox and Disney reportedly are also considering offering their channels. Such an online pay-TV service could provide yet another high-profile distribution option for Crackle, which already is available in 21 countries, including Australia and South America, on the web, through apps and with hundreds of devices.

Executives have said viewership these days is spread relatively evenly across users on PCs, smartphones or tablets and streaming-video devices such as Roku and Apple TV.

Its best-known program remains Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. When it launched in 2012, Comedians seemed to be just an entertaining little goof to pass the time after Seinfeld had cashed in big with his iconic 1990s sitcom. The premise is simple, and as literal as the show’s name: Seinfeld and another comedian take a ride in a classic car to get some java and jaw with each other.

But a funny thing happened on the way to pick up some joe: the show has become something of a critical darling. This weekend, it won a Streamy Award as best non-fiction show after nabbing a 2013 Primetime Emmy nomination for best short-form non-fiction programming. Other notable performers are making content for Crackle now too, and say they’re happy about the decision.

“When I first got offered to do this, I asked myself, ‘Do I want to be on the Internet?” said Jesse Bradford (Flags of Our Fathers, Bring It On), a star of Sequestered. “But I’m glad I did. It’s the interesting space right now.”

The show, a courtroom drama about a sequestered jury, also stars Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Chronicles of Sarah Connor) and Mr. All Media, Patrick Warburton (Rules of Engagement, Family Guy). The show also has some online roots: one of the show’s directors is Kevin Tancharoen, whose Mortal Kombat: Legacy 2 online series also won a Streamy Award this past weekend among a raft of nominations.

“I had to get over my own preconceived notion of what is going on in the world,” Bradford said. “TV is becoming movies, the Internet is becoming TV and film is becoming museum pieces that are hard to access.”

The show debuted half its episodes Aug. 5, with the other half coming in October. Because it’s the Internet, Bradford said, “the parameters are really loose. It’s not quite so paint-by-numbers.”

And he had another realization: Crackle’s production crew, “though they were a little young and a little green, had worked together a lot.” The result was the kind of near-telepathic cooperation and efficiency between crew members that Bradford said you might see on the set of a veteran director such as Clint Eastwood or Steven Spielberg, who have worked with many of the same behind-the-camera principals for years. That makes for great efficiency, though budgets still don’t leave a lot of room for dallying.

“What you get are these groups of people who know how to work together,” Bradford said. “How are we (shooting) 20 pages (of script) a day? That’s how.”

Crackle has other known quantities featured on its original shows: action series Cleaners, for instance, stars Missi Pyle, David Arquette and Gina Gershon. Crackle produced a first-ever “digital feature” last year, the actioner Extraction, that stars Danny Glover, Sean Astin, Vinnie Jones and Falk Hentschel.

After debuting Sequestered and the second season of Cleaners this summer, the company has more original series coming out this fall. One big venture is the game show spinoff Sports Jeopardy, hosted by the urbane sports broadcaster and syndicated radio host Dan Patrick. It debuts Sept. 24 with new episodes each Wednesday. Other plans include longer-form projects, including a Joe Dirt sequel, said Berger.

Here’s a teaser trailer featuring Patrick:

http://youtu.be/n8trYUCN4Mw

http://deadline.com/2014/09/crackle-jesse-bradford-jerry-seinfeld-eric-berger-sony-pictures-tv-832998/

A Video Series Turns a Spotlight on Local Artists

September 11, 2014September 11, 2014 Ellen

9/10/2014 The New York Times

AN online documentary about Porridge Papers, a company in Lincoln, Neb., that makes the type of deckle-edged recycled paper found in art supply and stationary stores, includes a field-trip visit by schoolchildren to the small mill and print shop.

“We love showing it to the kids because this is obviously nothing that they’ve ever heard of before,” says Christopher James, the owner of the company, as the students happily stir pulp with their hands and sift it onto screens, where it is pressed before being dried. “They’re very dialed in to the electronics, so to get them to come in here and think about that piece of paper” and how it was made fascinates children, he said.

One video features Claire Painter, who has a small leatherworking brand, Clever with Leather, in Lexington, Ky.

The video about such low-tech craftsmanship turns out to be a marketing campaign for a decidedly high-tech telecommunications company, Windstream Communications of Little Rock, Ark., which provides services like broadband Internet and telephone landlines in smaller cities and rural areas. A video series and Tumblr page, Locally Crafted, highlights people with creative pursuits in the areas that Windstream serves.

One video shows Dave Hall, also of Lincoln, whose auto shop, Restore a Muscle Car, specializes in making run-down cars from the 1970s like Firebirds or Camaros look — and sound — as if they just rolled out of the showroom. Another features Claire Painter, who has a small leatherworking brand, Clever with Leather, in Versailles, Ky. And the newest video, which is being introduced online on Thursday, features Ed Puterbaugh of Lexington, Ky., who owns a brand of locally sourced and made cheeses, Boone Creek Creamery.

The campaign is by Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, New York, part of MDC Partners, and direction and production was handled within the agency by other MDC Partners divisions including the Media Kitchen. Windstream, which declined to reveal the production expense for the four videos, and four more that will appear through the end of the year, spent $4.3 million on advertising in 2013, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

The web series is what marketers call branded content or branded entertainment, meaning that it aims primarily to entertain rather than to overtly sell products. Each episode opens with text that indicates that it is presented by Windstream, but contrary to what is often the case with branded content, the company is never mentioned or even obliquely evoked otherwise.

Sam Chotiner, a strategy director at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, which is the agency of record for Windstream, said that the company specified its selling points in traditional advertising, but that the video series was intended to promote uncelebrated people in the areas where the company does business.

“We thought that trying to sneak in a shot of a computer or phone line would get in the way of the stories,” he said. “Windstream completely understood and pushed for this strategy, which is about telling stories that matter in our footprint, and finding people who will really appreciate the exposure and platform.”

Barbara Lippert, an editor at large at MediaPost, said she was awed by the quality of the videos.

“They’re just beautiful little films,” she said. “I wouldn’t classify them as ads because there’s no selling, but the execution was fantastic.”

She added that the approach could appeal to consumers who have grown frustrated with some of the bigger telecommunications companies, which Windstream competes against in some of the larger markets it serves.

“Everybody hates Comcast and Time Warner because their service is terrible and because their constant nonstop blaring commercials are so in-your-face,” Ms. Lippert said. “And this is the opposite of that, so people who are fed up with the other ones might really appreciate this approach.”

In a Harris Poll in May on the reputation of the 60 most visible companies, Time Warner Cable ranked 45th, with a 65.8 score out of a possible 100, or “fair” reputation. Comcast, which is seeking to acquire Time Warner, ranked 50th, with a 62.6 rating, or “poor” reputation.

Michele Shaw, the director of consumer marketing communications at Windstream, made no direct comparison to larger telecom companies, but said that the new Locally Crafted series highlighted her company’s presence in smaller markets.

“Our brand is committed to providing services that connect rural communities and we believe that this Locally Crafted platform is the perfect extension of our brand position,” she said.

Mr. James of Porridge Papers said the video of his company, which was released online on June 25, prompted articles in newspapers in Lincoln and Omaha.

“It’s an odd pairing to have a telecommunications company work with someone that makes paper by hand,” he said. “But what it does, though, is bring two businesses together that are in the community and in the long run that definitely helps both of them out.”

Mr. James said he was pleasantly surprised that Windstream was happy to feature him even after learning that his company was halfway through a two-year contract with Time Warner. In a year, when he can do so without incurring a financial penalty, he said planned to switch to Windstream.

Michael Wolff on Vice Media: Why Hollywood Is Drinking the Kool-Aid

September 11, 2014September 11, 2014 Ellen

9/11/2014 The Hollywood Reporter

The Brooklyn digital property’s CEO, Shane Smith, touts a $2.5B valuation and has lured backers from A&E to Fox by claiming magical access to young men. But his real trick might be marketing to a harder-to-reach audience: middle-aged media execs, writes Wolff

This story first appeared in the Sept. 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Nancy Dubuc, Jeff Bewkes, James Murdoch, Tom Freston and Martin Sorrell are media executives cut from a similar button-down, corporate-culture cloth. So perhaps it is thrilling or titillating for them to meet someone like Vice’s Shane Smith, 44, who is all showman and promoter, a media type more reminiscent of the wild old days than the constrained new ones.

In late August, A&E Networks president and CEO Dubuc invested $250 million for a 10 percent interest in Vice, valuing the company at a whopping $2.5 billion (A&E is owned by Hearst and Disney). A tech venture firm, TCV, followed with $250 million for another 10 percent. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chairman and CEO, was set to do a deal with Vice at the beginning of the summer that would have valued the company at $2 billion — but Vice’s valuation rose more quickly than Bewkes’ ability to act. Murdoch bought 5 percent for $70 million in 2013 on behalf of 21st Century Fox and got a seat on the board; Sorrell, CEO of WPP, put $25 million in; and Freston, a former Viacom CEO, invested his own money early on and signed up as one of Vice’s key advisers. One might be forgiven for thinking of Zero Mostel in The Producers selling a Broadway show many times over.

In theory, these executives are drawn to Smith’s purported Pied Piper ability to attract that most sought-after and hard-to-reach (nearly always modified by “hard-to-reach”) demographic: distracted young men, more reliably playing video games than consuming traditional media. But they also are drawn to his Pied Piper ability to attract ever-more media executives and the ever-larger multiples they and their colleagues seem willing to pay for a piece of Vice.

Arguably, the latter has been proved out much more completely than the former. These days one can attach many superlatives to Vice — it might be the hottest, savviest, coolest, richest, Brooklyn-est (according to Smith, it is the biggest employer in Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn-ness) new media company on the block — but one thing it does not necessarily have is a supersized audience. Vice makes a torrent of YouTube videos, but most, according to YouTube stats, have limited viewership. The New York Times, in its coverage of Vice’s TCV deal, seemed eager to believe in Vice and at the same time was perplexed by it, quoting the company’s monthly global audience claim of 150 million viewers but, as well, comScore’s more official and low-wattage number of 9.3 million monthly unique visitors. BuzzFeed, with an audience many times greater, has been valued at less than a third of Vice’s $2.5 billion.

That is, of course, part of Smith’s showman appeal. Even with his company’s obvious limitations — YouTube is an unreliable platform — he has boasted of producing a range of superhuman business-model breakthroughs.

It doesn’t much matter, for instance, that Vice has low audience numbers because it does not sell the usual CPM-based advertising. Instead, Smith sells high-priced sponsorships — marketing the Vice idea, in other words, rather than the Vice numbers. What’s more, playing coy, he does not seem to sell advertisers very much, often offering big consumer brands like Anheuser-Busch modest sponsorship credit at the ends of videos.

Then, too, Vice’s growing profits come in part because it continues to act like an outsider and pay young workers catch-as-catch-can alternative-media wages, even though it now is a richly funded enterprise.

Another of Vice’s accomplishments has been to position itself as a cutting-edge technology company rather than a media company, thereby achieving a techlike valuation. But Vice really has few tech skills beyond Final Cut Pro, running much more by old media seat-of-the-pants instincts and aggressive salesmanship than new digital algorithms. (Vice, with its many fledgling music writers looking for a byline, often is compared inexactly to BuzzFeed, with its ever-growing staff of engineers able to game the social-media world.)

Smith also, counterintuitively, has launched his company into the news business, making it a veritable Zelig of multiple international conflicts. Its tipping-point moment might have been Dennis Rodman‘s Vice-sponsored embrace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and its step into legitimacy with its earnest HBO world-report show. But this is at a moment when it never has been more difficult to monetize news programming. Indeed, so bizarre is the notion that Vice’s young-male audience will watch international news that puzzled media minds only can seem to conclude it must be true — and another epochal media disruption. (YouTube widely advertises Vice as a type of new-wave 60 Minutes.)

Smith earns, or claims to earn, serious money in foreign distribution, and over a lunch we shared not long ago in Brooklyn, he described that as his secret revenue generator, endlessly slicing and dicing and reselling low-cost video into hungry distant markets. This is an appealing and expansive view of the modern video world but a wholly unfamiliar and bewildering one to anyone in the licensing and rights business.

Vice, by most accounts, makes the major portion of its revenue (according to reports, as much as $500 million a year) functioning largely as an advertising agency or, even lower on the media value scale, a video production and event-planning house. Yet Smith has managed to position this service function as part of the new content revolution and Vice as a necessary link between brands and the creative world.

Even though many aspects of the Vice business model strain credulity, the illusion of having done the improbable is, it seems, especially welcomed by lots of people who ought to know better. This might be a sign of their confusion or, as well, because they would like to be hawking illusions themselves instead of having to manage media’s grimmer realities. Selling smoke is, of course, the media business at its most romantic and often most profitable.

Smith’s central premise, illusory or not, is that he has mastery of a certain audience, sensibility and zeitgeist zone — he has inserted Vice into the cultural consciousness. There is no real-life manifestation of this, no particular set of characters, nor memorable phrases, nor hit shows on which he can stand. Vice is not South Park, with its millions of young devotees over now-multiple generations, its cultural impact and its guaranteed cash flow.

Yet Vice has created an identity and a sensibility that people seem able to understand without having to experience. This perhaps is ideal for middle-aged chief marketing officers trying to reach the boy-man demo who don’t themselves want to vet the puerile. And broad-based brand identity arguably is a more valuable content asset than specific shows because you don’t have to pay expensive writers or need an actual hit.

Smith has built Vice against a background of enormous uncertainty and angst within the media business. His seeming effortlessness has made him the contrast gainer: He is fleet of foot, everyone else left standing by the side of the road. Vice and its multiplatform cultural targeting, many media people believe, is the most important example of the way forward in the media business.

But while Smith might be the avatar of the new — the quick, the cheap, the young, the cool, the digital — it turns out, reassuringly, that his way forward is television. What he wants most is a channel, a network, a place to call his own. His new investment capital is said to be earmarked for securing a cable platform, possibly one of the current A&E channels (in addition to A&E, Lifetime and History, A&E Networks operates seven lesser-known channels).

The outline of Smith’s prospective deal with Time Warner had TW selling CNN’s channel HLN (formerly Headline News) to Vice for a stake in the company (this is where the $2 billion valuation came from, which Vice then traded up to $2.5 billion). Curiously, it might have been to Vice’s advantage not to have done that deal, not only because its valuation climbed a further 25 percent in two months but also because having its own channel might have made it as accountable as everyone else. Vice might be a stronger brand for being hard to find — as something you think you should watch, rather than something you have decided not to watch.

Vice’s other trick, perhaps its central one, is not to have been taken over by a big company. None of its big media investors, all control freaks, is accustomed to a minority position — but somehow Smith has gotten them all to be willing and eager junior members of the Vice club. True, they all can look forward to the next deal and the next valuation bump. But largely they seem to have acquiesced to sideline status and to letting Smith call the shots because they really seem to believe he knows the secret, one he has yet to share with anyone. He’s got the magic — and nobody has seen magic in the media business for quite some time.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-vice-media-why-731415

Why Indie Bookstores Are on the Rise Again

September 10, 2014September 10, 2014 Ellen

Borders and B&N tried to compete with Amazon, and failed. Independent stores can’t even try—nor do they have to.

Sept. 9 2014 By Zachary Karabell

Slate

The recent news of the opening of an independent bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was greeted with surprise and delight, since a neighborhood once flush with such stores had become a retail book desert. The opening coincides with the relocation of the Bank Street Bookstore near Columbia University, leading the New York Times to declare, “Print is not dead yet — at least not on the Upper West Side.”

Two stores don’t constitute a trend, but they do point to a quiet revival of independent bookselling in the United States. They also underscore the shifting sands of physical bookselling, where the biggest losers are not—as was once assumed—the independent booksellers, but rather the large book chains.

Only a few years ago, observers projected that the rise of chain stores and Amazon would lead to the vast shrinkage of independent bookstores. According to the American Booksellers Association, the number of member independent bookstores has increased more than 20 percent since the depths of the recession, from 1,651 in 2009 to 2,094 in 2014. Meanwhile, Borders went bankrupt in 2011, and the fate of Barnes & Noble, which failed to make the Nook into a viable e-reader competitor with Amazon’s Kindle, appears murky. What happened?

The short answer is that by listing their shares as public companies, both Borders and Barnes & Noble were drawn into a negative vortex that destroyed the former and has crippled the latter. Not only did they become public companies, but they positioned themselves as high-growth companies, focused on innovation and disruption. That forced them to compete with the growth company par excellence in their space: Amazon. It also forced them to pursue high sales volume at the expense of inventories. Those strategies, as it turned out, were precisely wrong for the actual business they were in: selling books to a selective audience. Which is precisely what independent bookstores are good at.

Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million, and even Costco looked to be squeezing the life out of indies in the 1990s and into the aughts. Borders alone went from 21 stores in 1992 to 256 superstores in 1999. Barnes & Noble saw even greater growth. Those stores offered more choices, cafes, magazines, and for a while, music. Many independents, already operating with razor-thin margins, couldn’t compete. Between 2000 and 2007, some 1,000 independent bookstores closed.

But even as they were expanding, the chains were beset by questionable management decisions pressured by the demands of public markets to grow, grow, grow. Facing the need for expensive investment in technology, Borders sold its online distribution to Amazon in 2001 and threw its efforts into more stores and bigger stores, using its share price to finance massive debt. Barnes & Noble opened more superstores as well, but it also decided to challenge Amazon by developing the Nook at a cost of more than $1 billion.

The results were disastrous. Barnes & Noble bled money; it just announced earnings with yet another quarter of losses and declining revenue. Amazon dominated because it could spend far more money on technology than the chains, and because its core competency was in the disruptive technologies of e-readers, distribution, and inventory management. Amazon was never seen primarily as a retailer, and hence it could carry massive inventories that were a drag on its earnings and then spend billions on research and development because investors accepted Amazon’s narrative that it was a disruptive technology company redefining how everything is sold, not just books.

The chains, however, were valued as retailers, which meant that they had to have higher sales, more stores, and lower inventory to justify their stock prices. Because investors viewed the chains as retailers, they had to move product. That is what clothing stores do: Old inventory gets put on sale and then off-loaded to discount stores. Unsold inventory shows up on income statements as a negative against sales. To demonstrate higher profitability, retail stores have an incentive to turn over their inventories quickly.

For clothing and electronics and automobiles, that workflow is in sync with consumer behavior. Consumers want new fashion, the newest flat-screen, the latest model car. Book consumers aren’t the same. Yes, new titles can drive sales, but book buyers also look for forgotten classics and hidden gems. That means poring over shelves, and that requires old inventory. The chains and their management could have tried to set investors’ expectations for higher unsold inventories as a healthy part of the specific business of buying and selling books. But they didn’t. They treated old inventory as a drag rather than an asset and began to trim their shelves of titles. (Alternatively, they could have tried to position themselves as larger, better-stocked versions of the independents, focusing on the particular desires of book customers.)

Independent bookstores never had to answer to the dictates of public markets. Many of their proprietors understood, intuitively and from conversations with customers, that a well-curated selection—an inventory of old and new books—was their primary and maybe only competitive advantage. In the words of Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, “The indie bookselling amalgam of knowledge, innovation, passion, and business sophistication has created a unique shopping experience.”

Teicher is hardly a neutral observer, but the revival of independents can’t be statistically denied. Not only have numbers of stores increased, but sales at indies have grown about 8 percent a year over the past three years, which exceeds the growth of book sales in general. One of the strongest categories last year and into this year is hardcover nonfiction, and that has not been the most robust area for Amazon-dominated e-books. Amazon’s sales have been strongest in mass-market fiction. No independent bookstore could thrive on mass-market softcover sales. Instead, they do well with hardcovers, illustrated children’s books, cookbooks, and the like. And while indies cannot compete with Amazon’s inventory, Amazon evidently cannot supplant indies as shopping and social experiences.

The independent stores will never be more than a niche business of modest sales and very modest profitability. But the same is true for many small businesses, which makes them no less vital—but also means they’ll never be candidates for public markets. The chains competed in public markets for investor dollars with precisely the wrong metrics and with Amazon undercutting their growth prospects. They churned inventory and tried to become digital players, and they lost. (Barnes & Noble may yet reverse that trend with its recent partnership with Samsung to develop a next-generation tablet and e-reader.) The independents, meanwhile, offer something neither Amazon nor the chains can: attention to the quirky needs of their customer base. For the Upper West Side and thousands of other neighborhoods, those stores have turned out to be irreplaceable.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/2014/09/independent_bookstores_rising_they_can_t_compete_with_amazon_and_don_t_have.html

Modern Authors Delve Into Digital and Visual Storytelling

September 3, 2014September 3, 2014 Ellen

9/2/2014 Mashable

By Stephanie Walden

Storytelling is one of humanity’s earliest and most celebrated traditions. From the era of Homeric epics to today’s 140-character Twitter updates, people have cherished telling and listening to stories in a variety of formats since the dawn of time — and in the digital era, everyone seems to be describing themselves as a storyteller.

For authors, journalists and creative writers, self-publishing platforms and the explosion of digital and social media is a game-changer. Twitter, Facebook, blogging — even newer platforms such as Vine or Snapchat — can all be valuable resources for authors trying to gain exposure, get published, respond to feedback and connect with fans.

As storytelling evolves to keep up with digital culture, authors are getting more and more creative with their online tactics, particularly when it comes to incorporating visual content into their written work. While a published novel or memoir might contain only text, a piece of content published online has almost limitless potential for creative, visual assets to complement the story. Below, we’ve compiled a few suggestions from authors and writers on how they utilize social to promote their work, brainstorm ideas and supplement their creative processes.

Facebook, Twitter and “traditional” platforms

Some authors create a dedicated Facebook fan page; others prefer to keep the conversation concise with Twitter’s 140-character limit. Regardless, most writers these days are turning to social platforms in some capacity to promote their work, connect with fans and give new depth to their characters.

John Green, for example, author of The Fault in Our Stars, has a rabid online fan base, with more than 2.3 million Facebook fans and more than 3 million Twitter followers, as well as a large Tumblr and YouTube following.

It’s live! A new video about agricultural reform, flying in a helicopter with Bill Gates, and innovative cursing. https://t.co/kNkLmHceKR

— John Green (@realjohngreen) August 26, 2014

Green posts about a variety of subjects, focusing not only on his own work, but also on causes he’s involved with, like the UN’s World Food Program, for which he went on a recent trip to Ethiopia to raise awareness. Green gives his own voice to the issue and, in turn, builds audience engagement that goes beyond simple self-promotion. He utilizes a number of tactics — YouTube videos and vlogs, for example — to command audience attention and provide supplemental, visual content to his textually based posts.

Rainbow Rowell, author of New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park and an active social media user, utilizes her Facebook page primarily to update fans about upcoming events and book signings. Her Twitter account, on the other hand, is infused with a bit more of her personality and voice, retweeting fans and influencers and posting amusing anecdotes about everyday life.

Post by Rainbow Rowell.

“I think the best way to use social media to promote yourself is to post content other than just your writing on both your Facebook and Twitter pages,” says Nihar Suthar, author of Win No Matter What.

“Fans like to see your personality outside of just an author, and the more they can relate to you, the more they will follow you and read your work in the future.”

To Suthar’s point, authors probably won’t grow massive Twitter followings by shamelessly tweeting “Buy my new book!” every 30 seconds — but there are several ways authors can get creative on social media to promote themselves and build an online community.

David Mitchell, for example, author of Cloud Atlas, published a short story entirely on Twitter entitled The Right Sort, as a creative way to promote his new novel, The Bone Clocks. This type of experimental storytelling certainly presents its own set of obstacles — the story itself, though creatively executed, can be a bit hard to follow when reading on Twitter, forcing fans to be diligent about checking the account to follow along as the plot unfolds.

Creativity can pay off, however. Mitchell’s Twitter story resulted in a fair amount of press, as well as retweets from fans — and a similar experiment with #TwitterFiction in 2012 by A Visit from the Goon Squad author Jennifer Egan was later published in the New Yorker.

Some authors take it a step further and actually create social accounts for various characters in their novels, short stories or other work, effectively creating a social “world” in which fans can watch plot threads play out online, or interact with characters virtually.

“One of the most interesting ways I’ve found to connect with readers is through Instagram and Tumblr accounts for my main characters,”

“One of the most interesting ways I’ve found to connect with readers is through Instagram and Tumblr accounts for my main characters,” says Scott Bergstrom, author of The Cruelty. “[These accounts] contain none of the spam that dominates so many authors’ social media feeds. I post original content, and I actively engage in the community with likes, mentions and re-grams of other people’s fantastic content.” The visual nature of sites like Instagram and Tumblr can help fans and readers conceptualize characters and settings — and authors can provide as much of a complete picture of these various aspects of their work as they wish, leaving either very little or a great deal up to the readers’ imaginations.

When it comes to building a fan base on these platforms, some fans will naturally gravitate to their favorite authors’ social pages. For novice authors or writers hoping to build an online community from scratch, however, there are a few steps to take to boost fan and follower counts: Be sure to include Twitter handles and Amazon links in author bios, on business cards, on any marketing collateral and certainly on websites or blogs; hosting and participating in Twitter chats can also help effectively build an audience; lastly, visuals are key in both blogs and social media posts — including high-quality and interesting photos, images and videos can help boost engagement exponentially.

The key for success on social media is often patience. Unless you’re a bestseller, well known or especially hilarious and adept at Twitter’s 140-character snark, it’s unlikely that social accounts will blow up overnight and without substantial effort.

Blogging and guest blogging

Keeping a blog is a pretty common-sense endeavor for an author

Keeping a blog is a pretty common-sense endeavor for an author — provided you have the time and desire to update on a frequent (weekly, at a minimum) basis. Author blogs can function as informative or creative — the content can be as simple as providing fans with information on book tours and signings, or as complex as alternative plots or extensions of previously published works.

The latter option presents a particularly intriguing concept — no longer does a story have to end after the last page of a novel. Authors who wish to capitalize on the success of a book or who want to revisit certain plot lines or characters that weren’t developed fully in their published works can utilize blogs to continue the story well past the publish date. There’s a reason why there are entire online forums, websites, online games and even IRL leagues devoted to J.K. Rowling‘s beloved Harry Potter series: People love the chance to escape reality. If you, as an author, can provide an online space for them to do just that — that just so happens to simultaneously raise awareness about your work — you just might hit a goldmine.

Including visuals within blog posts can further improve shareability, break up long blocks of text and engage fans. Authors can get creative when adding visual content to their online writing, in the form of book covers, sketches, photos and even videos, which can all be helpful assets to include in an otherwise textually heavy post. Instagrams, which can easily be embedded into such posts, are an easy way to add flavor to an author’s blog.

Social media for research and inspiration

Any well known writer probably cringes at the idea of receiving yet more pitches for upcoming work. However, every now and then, social media paves the way for the discovery of a rare gem or million-dollar idea.

Such was the case for Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, the book that sparked the movie The Social Network. “Ever since the movie 21 came out (based on my book Bringing Down The House about the MIT kids who took Vegas for millions), I’ve been getting about ten to twenty pitches a week; if a college kid does something stupid or crazy, I usually get an email,” writes Mezrich in an email correspondence with Mashable.

“The movie The Social Network began with an email I received out of the blue from a Harvard senior, which said ‘My best friend co-founded Facebook, and nobody has ever heard of him.'”

The rest, as they say, was history: The movie — the screenplay was adapted/written by Aaron Sorkin — went on to gross more than $224 million worldwide and was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Mezrich continues to use social media for research and tracking down sources/sparking ideas for his current work. For an upcoming novel, Seven Wonders, the author conducted a great deal of the research using Facebook, Google and other online resources. “[The book is] a huge, world-traveling adventure about the Seven Wonders of the world. It links various ancient cultures and religions, and the research for it was massive,” says Mezrich. “I used social media to link up with professors around the world who could instruct me on various aspects of each sight.”

Using social and online resources for research purposes also helps authors visualize settings and landmarks they may not have visited in person — which, in turn, paints a more accurate and complete picture for the reader. “I used YouTube and various blogs to get videos of many of the places that appear in the book,” says Mezrich. “To create the main character, an anthropologist with a lust for adventure, I went on various university websites until I found conversations by the type of people I wanted to model [main character] Jack Grady after — and I built him up from there.”

Beyond Facebook and Twitter: The unconventional players in the social media space

Most people in the publishing world are familiar with the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. and their benefits and intricacies. Newer platforms, though perhaps not as obviously helpful as the social giants, can also provide creative outlets for authors to connect with fans.

GoodReads and Quora are both platforms that come up repeatedly in conversations with authors about how they use online platforms to connect with an audience. “I’ve been using Quora to get in touch with people who have questions for me; and GoodReads has a great online reading community,” says Mezrich.

One thing is clear: A focus on visuals is dominating the social media landscape. Snapchat, Vine, Pinterest and Instagram all offer unique advantages and opportunities for promotion and engagement. Some authors pin book cover art for inspiration for their own upcoming projects, or keep a virtual “quote book” on Pinterest; others target college-aged students with Snapchat stories. Vines can be used for promotional purposes, or authors can call on fans to create mini videos depicting their favorite compelling scenes (in six-seconds, of course) from various works. Running these types of contests is an excellent way to raise awareness about a book launch or start a conversation among readers around a specific plot point.

On Tumblr and other visual platforms, authors can really think outside the box of traditional blogging. These visually compelling platforms present opportunities for authors to interact with their online community. “For me, one of the biggest challenges has been finding ways to engage while working on a new project,” says Chad Hall, blogger and author.

“Writing, to anyone but the writer, is a solitary business. It’s not very exciting until complete.

“Writing, to anyone but the writer, is a solitary business. It’s not very exciting until complete. How many times can you tweet, ‘Big writing day’? How many photos can you post of a pad of paper or a keyboard?”

To further engage his online audience, Hall adds an artistic flair to postings by drawing book covers of various material he’s reading onto his Instagram and Tumblr. “It’s not specifically about my writing, but it keeps people associating me with books while I’m working away at things that aren’t very sexy to share. I also draw and share illustrations for my weekly blog,” he says.

A variety of lesser known platforms and plugins can be helpful in conjunction with traditional social sites. “For promotion, I find that CredSpark and THiNKaha are great ways to take new angles on your content,” says Karin Hurt, CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders and creator of the blog by the same name. “CredSpark enables you to produce a free online assessment of your book, and THiNKaha is an inexpensive and easy way to produce an ebook of your very best tweets on a topic.”

Storify is another tool that some authors and writers cite as helpful for online promotion and engagement. The free application enables users to create and display galleries collected from media around the web — authors can create a Storify of people interacting with their book or blog, and it can then be embedded into a Tumblr or website. “It’s a great way to make a book launch feel like a community event, and it uses curated content, so you don’t have to constantly create something new,” says Eva Gantz, founder and writer at Giving Books a Voice.

While not all authors embrace social — Dave Eggers‘ The Circle, which examines the implications of a dystopian society overly dependent on social media, has been called a “scathing attack” on digital obsessions — there’s little doubt that writers have a great deal to gain by establishing a visually compelling online presence. As authors adapt to an increasingly digital world, a little creativity has the potential for a big payoff.

http://mashable.com/2014/09/02/authors-on-social-media/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-socmed-link

It’s No Blip, Online Video Is Taking Ad Dollars From Traditional TV: Analyst

September 2, 2014September 2, 2014 Ellen

9/2/2014 Deadline

by David Lieberman

http://deadline.com/2014/09/tv-advertising-online-taking-dollars-827634/

76 Ways to Make Money in Digital Media

September 2, 2014September 2, 2014 Ellen

8/29/2014 Slate

By David Plotz

In much the same way I used to quiz my grandmother about how she survived the Great Depression, a younger colleague recently asked me what online journalism was like in the 1990s (we started Slate in 1996). As I started to talk about it, I realized that the journalism itself hasn’t changed that much—blah blah social media, blah blah interactives, blah blah longform—but what has changed is the money. There didn’t used to be any. Now there’s a lot.

As an exercise, I made myself two lists: all the sources of revenue I can remember for 1998 digital journalism and all the sources of revenue I can remember for 2014 digital journalism. I’m not exactly sure what they explain, but I suspect it’s a lot.

In 1998, the sources of revenue for online journalism were:

Funding from some rich person
Funding from some rich company that was making a long-shot bet
Banner ads
Really bad subscription schemes
Some lead-generation business (as Jim Ledbetter reminded me)

In 2014, the sources of revenue for digital journalism are:

Funding from some rich person (e.g., eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media)
Funding from some rich company that is making a long-shot bet (e.g., some of Bloomberg’s ventures)
Ads from real (i.e., not network) advertisers
Ad network ads
AdSense ads from Google
Outbrain-style links to other people’s content that pays when readers click it
Native advertising
Make the native ads yourself and get a production fee
Build a microsite for the native content and get paid separately for that
Subscription (no content unless you pay)
Paywall (some content, then you have to pay, à la the New York Times)
Micropayment (pay for each individual piece of content)
Membership (content is free, but bonus stuff—discounts, Easter eggs—for members; e.g., Slate Plus!)
Tablet-only subscriptions
Paid app
Tip jar (asking for support without perks)
Kindle subscriptions
Sell swag and merchandise directly to readers.
Amazon Associates revenue (via links in stories)
Amazon Associates revenue where you assign stories about products in order to get the sales cut
Sell your own merchandise but through a company that fulfills it and pays you a cut (e.g., Café Press)
Lead generation—send a reader who becomes a customer, get paid
Syndicate stories to other digital publishers to run on their sites
Syndicate stories to print publications
Syndication for textbooks/academia (e.g., PARS)
LexisNexis
Syndicate content for advertiser’s microsite
Public events—ticket revenue
Public events—corporate sponsor revenue
Conferences for professionals—ticket revenue
Conferences—other forms of sponsorship (badge sponsorship, mobile service sponsorship)
Paid parties: Readers pay to socialize with you
Conferences—booths/expo revenue
Events as sales spiel—bring people in for content of event, then sell them something
Native events—events put on for advertiser
Foundation funds journalism on a favorite subject
University funds journalism on a favored subject
Donations from foundations not tied to a particular project
Mobile banner ads
Mobile and tablet interstitials
Video ads from real advertisers
Network video ads
Google/YouTube pays to have you create video
YouTube video revenue share
Podcast ads—not host-read
Podcast ads, host-read, paid for click-through/sign ups
Podcast ads, host read, not paid for performance
Podcast festivals
Podcasts created for sponsors
Cruises for readers
Teach classes for readers or other journalists
Webinars
Sell photo archives both digitally and as prints
Publish physical books of your digital content
Kindle singles and other e-books
Sell unusual books for non-Amazon publishers, as Slate did with this Ursula LeGuin book
Sell movie and TV rights
Product placement—get paid for using products and reviewing them
Use your Google page rank power to put in links to other places and get paid for referrals (which undoubtedly infuriates Google)
Sponsored tweets
Get paid to make Facebook posts on a particular subject.
Ads in emails
Kickstarter fundraising (à la 99 Percent Invisible)
Build apps for people
Higher-end specialized product (e.g., Politico Pro)
Targeted research for subscribers who pay a premium (e.g., BI Intelligence)
Create viral content for advertisers and charge for virality in a BuzzFeed-y manner
Get people to sign up for an email list for an advertiser, as Upworthy does
Sell your subscriber data
Sell your email lists
Build a platform, put great journalism on it, and sell the platform (e.g., the Atavist)
Wine Clubs
Sell access to archives (hat tip: Joe Turner)
Get government funding to create journalism, e.g., USAID (hat tip: Joe Turner again)
More than a tip jar—straight-up donations, à la Brainpickings and NPR (hat tip: David Harvey)
White papers

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/29/_76_ways_to_make_money_in_digital_media_a_list_from_slate_s_former_editor.html

Dealing With Digital Cruelty

August 28, 2014August 31, 2016 Ellen

8/23/2014 The New York Times

ANYONE who has ever been online has witnessed, or been virtually walloped by, a mean comment. “If you’re going to be a blogger, if you’re going to tweet stuff, you better develop a tough skin,” said John Suler, a professor of psychology at Rider University who specializes in what he refers to as cyberpsychology. Some 69 percent of adult social media users said they “have seen people being mean and cruel to others on social network sites,” according to a 2011 report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Posts run the gamut from barbs to sadistic antics by trolls who intentionally strive to distress or provoke. Last week, Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, said she was going off Twitter, possibly for good, after brutal tweets by trolls about her father’s death. Yet comments do not even have to be that malevolent to be hurtful. The author Anne Rice signed a petition a few months ago asking Amazon.com to ban anonymous reviews after experiencing “personal insults and harassing posts,” as she put it on the site of the petition, Change.org. Whether you’re a celebrity author or a mom with a décor blog, you’re fair game. Anyone with a Twitter account and a mean streak can try to parachute into your psyche.

In the virtual world, anonymity and invisibility help us feel uninhibited. Some people are inspired to behave with greater kindness; others unleash their dark side. Trolls, who some researchers think could be mentally unbalanced, say the kinds of things that do not warrant deep introspection; their singular goal is to elicit pain. But then there are those people whose comments, while nasty, present an opportunity to learn something about ourselves.

Easier said than done. Social scientists say we tend to fixate on the negative. However, there are ways to game psychological realities. Doing so requires understanding that you are ultimately in charge. “Nobody makes you feel anything,” said Professor Suler, adding that you are responsible for how you interpret and react to negative comments. The key is managing what psychologists refer to as involuntary attention.

Just as our attention naturally gravitates to loud noises and motion, our minds glom on to negative feedback. Much discussed studies like “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” published in 2001 in the Review of General Psychology, have shown that we respond more strongly to bad experiences and criticism, and that we remember them more vividly. “These are things that stick in our brain,” said James O. Pawelski, the director of education and a senior scholar in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we allow our attention to move involuntarily, that’s where it goes.” The mind, however, can be tamed.

One way to become proactive is to ask yourself if those barbs you can’t seem to shrug off have an element of truth. (Glaringly malicious posts can be dismissed.) If the answer is yes, Professor Suler has some advice:

Let your critics be your gurus.

“You can treat them as an opportunity,” he said. Ask yourself why you’re ruminating on a comment. “Why does it bother you?” Professor Suler said. “What insecurities are being activated in you?”

For instance, maybe you have an unconscious worry that you’re somehow not good enough. Professor Suler said it was not uncommon for some digital luminaries (bloggers, social media power-users) to harbor such worries because one motivation, be it conscious or unconscious, is that they want to be liked. “They want to be popular,” he said, adding that it’s a goal easily pursued on the Internet. “It’s all about likes and pluses and favorites.” Yet if someone says something cruel, he continued, “it activates that unconscious worry.”

But let’s say the negative comment fails to induce self-psychologizing. Perhaps it can help you learn something about your work.

“It’s easy to feel emotionally attacked from these things,” said Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution. But he said that doesn’t mean that your critics don’t have a point.

Consider the more than 50 reviews of Mr. Pozen’s book “Extreme Productivity” on Amazon.com. Most were four and five stars, but for the purposes of this article, he conducted an unscientific experiment and checked out the handful of one- and two-star reviews. “You know, some of them are pretty negative,” said Mr. Pozen, the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, “but the question is, ‘How do you read them?’ ” One unfavorable review was easily dismissed, Mr. Pozen said, because it was apparent that the writer had not thoroughly read the material. Another reviewer criticized the book for being too “U.S.-centric.” Mr. Pozen considered that idea — and decided that the reader, despite not having put it particularly nicely, might be right. “So I thought, ‘Well if I ever write another version of this book I ought to take that into account,’ ” he said.

It’s not always possible, of course, to learn something from a nasty comment. Some are baseless; some are crass. One way to help them roll off you is to consider the writer’s motivation.

Professor Suler wrote in 2004 in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior about a concept known as “the online disinhibition effect” — the idea that “people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world.” In the virtual realm, factors including anonymity, invisibility and lack of authority allow disinhibition to flourish. The result can be benign (“unusual acts of kindness and generosity”), or it can be toxic: “rude language, harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats,” as Professor Suler put it.

The latter is the realm of trolls. Some people think of their online life “as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living,” he wrote, a game for which they do not feel responsible. If bloggers and people who use social networks keep this concept in mind, he said, “they will see the psychology” of aggressors, and their comments may be easier to take — and possibly ignore. Sometimes it’s smart to do as Ms. Williams ultimately did: disconnect.

Harsh comments can also be made to feel less potent by directly disputing to yourself what was said. If, for example, someone writes, “You’re an idiot and no one likes you,” you can marshal evidence against it by reminding yourself, Stuart Smalley-style, of the obvious: You have an education, a job, more friends than you have time to see in a week.

Speaking of time, be mindful of when you choose to glance at your blog or social media feeds. Researchers have discovered that feeling blue or even being in a so-called neutral mood makes people more vulnerable to nasty comments. In other words: Stay off Twitter if you just bombed a presentation.

Another way to stop yourself from dwelling on negative feedback is to enter into what psychologists refer to as “flow,” a state in which the mind is completely engaged. Flow can be achieved when playing a piano concerto, practicing karate, writing code, being deep in conversation with a friend. “The toughest time is when the mind is not fully occupied,” said Professor Pawelski, who also prescribes humor as a way to deflect barbs. He joked that bars would make a killing if at the end of each semester they offered “professor happy hours” where teachers could bring their evaluations and pass the negative ones around. “Nobody should be alone when they’re reading these things,” he said.

Yet even when a person is alone, humor can be effective. Try reading nasty comments aloud in a goofy voice, Professor Pawelski advised, so that when your mind automatically plays back the comment it sounds absurd, or at the very least loses a bit of its bite.

Such prescriptions are in the spirit of Jimmy Kimmel’s “mean tweets” television segment, during which celebrities — Julia Roberts, Pharrell Williams, Robert De Niro — read aloud the rotten things people write about them on Twitter while R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” plays softly in the background. After reading the often expletive-riddled tweets — an act that Mr. Kimmel has said is meant “to help put a face on this unsavory activity” — some celebrities talk back to their detractors; others laugh; a few peer into the camera in silence. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times that other shows have similar routines: The television hosts of “E! News” have taken to reading aloud the “sour” tweets they receive from viewers, though they read a few of the “sweet” tweets, too.

Turns out they may be on to something. In the quest to quell the cruel, we often fail to savor the good. And there is, despite the meanies, much good whirring around cyberspace. Some 70 percent of Internet users said they “had been treated kindly or generously by others online,” according to a Pew report early this year.

Rather than scrolling past a dozen positive comments and lingering on the sole exception, what if you did the opposite? And what if you shared a couple of the good ones with friends instead of sharing the one that hurt you? Research shows that it takes more time for positive experiences to become lodged in our long-term memory, so it’s not just pleasurable to dwell on a compliment — it’s shrewd.

“We’re really bad, typically, as a culture about accepting compliments,” Professor Pawelski said. “They’re meant to be taken in and really appreciated. They’re meant to be gifts.”

Piers Morgan Most Hated U.K. Personality on Twitter

August 28, 2014May 8, 2015 Ellen

8/27/2014 THR

Study finds former CNN host receives abuse in 8.7 percent of messages

Piers Morgan isn’t exactly one to hold back on social media, regularly doling out insults via Twitter to the likes of Madonna, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and various U.K. soccer players. But it seems the former CNN host is also high on the list of personalities on the receiving end of online verbal attacks.

According to a study for U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times, Morgan receives abuse in 8.7 percent of tweets sent to him, higher than any other U.K. celebrity. Ricky Gervais, another prolific Twitter user, receives abuse in 2.6 percent.

The study, conducted by the think tank Demos, examined two million tweets sent to prominent U.K. politicians, celebrities, journalists and musicians over a four-week period, with the aim of analyzing trolling. It found that men were twice as likely to receive abusive tweets than women, but were also responsible for about two-thirds of offensive material. Only female journalists received more than their male counterparts.

While Morgan may attract the most abuse, musicians such as Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, Rita Ora and Ed Sheeran attracted the lowest level, at 0.41 percent.

One Direction member Niall Horan was excluded from the study. With 12.6 million messages received over the period, it was felt his statistics would have distorted the results.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/piers-morgan-hated-uk-personality-728398