VITAMEDIAS

Media Overload on the Rise: It's projected that by 2007 the average American will spend 3,874 hours per year with the major consumer media, according to "Investment Considerations for the Communications Industry," a report released last week by investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson. That would mark an increase of 792 hours per year, or 21 percent, from the 3,082 hours per year that the average person spent using consumer media in 1977, the year that VSS first began tracking such behavior.