Magazine advertising figures are way down. And to make things worst one of my secret addictions, American Idol is down 10% in their debut ratings.

Rate-card reported ad revenue declined more precipitously as the year went on, dropping 13.8 percent in the fourth quarter and 7.8 percent for the year. Ad pages fell 17.1 percent in the quarter and 11.7 percent for the full year. Real Estate and Insurance is off 36% for the last quarter of 2008 and 17% for the year.

Media Week intuits that this has been caused by the market conditions, especially at the end of the year. However, one has to wonder how much of the spend is moving online. Especially, in light of the recent Century 21 Announcement that they are killing their TV spend and taking it to the web.

So what does American Idol have to do with ads? Well if their viewership is down, then an advertiser will not be as willing to pay as much as they did before, if at all. Is it just that the market has spoken and Idol is tired? Or is it that people are watching less TV as a whole?

The data says yes 2.5 million people are watching less TV. And

Deloitte indicating that Millennials, the generation of 14- to 25-year-olds, watch just 10.5 hours of TV a week.

That compares to 15.1 hours for those belonging to Generation X (ages 26-42), 19.2 hours for Baby Boomers (43-61) and 21.5 hours for Matures (62-75).

Lest one assume Millennials are shunning broadcast and cable in favor of watching DVDs on their TV screens — they’re not. They spend less time watching DVDs of movies and TV shows on television sets, 4.8 hours a week, than do Gen Xers.

TV does remain the most influential advertising medium going, followed by magazines, the Internet, newspapers, radio and billboards.

Social networking sites are considered separate from the rest of the Internet, and they are the seventh-most influential place to advertise, followed by in-theater ads, DVDs, blogs (again, distinct from the Internet), video games, mobile phones and virtual worlds.