"I'm feeling better!"

A couple of recent studies reveal that somebody didn’t tell the consumers that old media like newspaper, radio and TV is dead.

A Nielsen study found that 77% of adults were reached by broadcast radio on a daily basis, which was second only to television, which reached 95% of all adults. In fact, when it comes to audio media consumption,

The 77% who listen to broadcast radio surpass the 37% who listen to CDs and tapes and the 12% who listen to portable audio devices. Broadcast radio also continues to play a major role to all ages, with almost 80 percent of those aged 18 to 34 listening to broadcast radio in an average day.

“There are a lot of critics out there who want to write off broadcast radio, but this analysis of real-time media consumption shows that it continues to play a very strong role,” said Dr. Michael Link, VP of Methodological Research at The Nielsen Company.

Meanwhile a Scarborough Research study showed that newspapers continue to hold strong reach of their readership. They found that 74% of American adults read a ink on newsprint or online newspaper at least once per week. That adds up to 171 million American adults connected with the newspaper industry every week.

However, such strong numbers may not be enough to thwart ad sales declines:

While welcome news for the industry, these kind of data merely serve to highlight the fact that ad revenues appear to have become decoupled from audience size. An analysis of figures from Audit Bureau of Circulations shows that between the first half of 2005 and the first half of 2009, total circulation for 125 big American newspapers declined about 14%, from 27.1 million to 23.3 million.

Over the same period, print ad revenues plunged from $22.2 billion in the first half of 2005 to $12.2 billion in the first half of 2009 — a 45% decrease, over three times the percentage decline in audience.

Needless to say, this economic downturn couldn’t have come at a worse time for these media outlets. It’s hard to ascertain what part of the ad depression is from the overall macroeconomic climate, and what part is the advertisers moving onto more “hip” new media venues.