Is Old Media Dead? Hardly.

I read two postings online that fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

The first gives lie to the notion that everyone is glued to their iPhone or computer in order to watch videos. Television is dead. Or is it?

Susan Whiting, Vice Chair and Executive Vice President of the Nielsen Company says that Americans are devoting 153 hours a month to watching television--or better than 5 hours a day. To be sure we are increasingly turning to alternative media for our viewing. --130 million Americans watch video online, up 13% year-over-year. Meanwhile, 13 million of us see videos on our cell phones.

The point Whiting makes is important: true, people are increasingly watching videos on their computers and on hand held devices but not at the expense of old media TV.

The lesson here is that there is an insatiable appetite for media, no matter where we watch it. If any medium suffers as a result of this trend, it is print. There are just so many hours in the day.

And then there is the story of Time-Warner dumping AOL. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

Finally: Twitter. A new survey has it that 60% of new Twitter users stop tweeting after just a month.

Perhaps we should be cautious about judging which media are dead and which are alive and what the future is.