Bummer of a Business Model, Redux

I ran over this fascinating graph this morning, from a presentation put together by Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist.



Newspaper ad revenues is that long blue line at the top that has been falling continually for the last 60 years.
The observation that strikes me is not The Internet is killing Newspapers!
The question that strikes me is What was killing Newspapers for the four decades before the Internet came along? For that matter, why wasn't the newspaper business doing something about it?

_{The answer to that next-to-last question, by the way, is that advertisers have shifted their spending from newspapers to television continually for the last half century, as people have stopped being readers and started being viewers instead.}