The aging of watching television

According to an article on Slashdot, the median age of people watching television is rising. Currently the median age for several US-American networks is 50. From a marketing point of view, the 18 to 49 is considered the most valuable one. A funny situation arises; the customers are ageing and given that the networks have a choice; do they acknowledge this trend in their programming or will they continue to program for a teeny public.

I would like to understand these numbers better;

• Are less people watching people 
• Are the young watching less television
• Are the old watching more television
• What are the people doing that do not watch television

When people move away from the television and move on to the Internet, you can still find the same way of working; I do not use Microsoft's MSN network because of its ridiculous amount of advertising. As I can typically  find interesting info elsewhere as well, I am sure that a fight will be fought about control of information on the Internet . The advertisers have no control of the web and find it hard to influence how people access information and as long as they don't, the Internet will be useful as well as informative.
Thanks,
     GerardM