All flesh is grass. All fiction too?

This blog post from writer Anna Kashina features an interview with DAW editor Peter Stampfel.
Stampfel is pessimistic about fiction. He sees more and more SF/fantasy readers finding other ways to spend their time, such as online gaming, and growing numbers of readers turning to nonfiction. His conclusion is that reading in general is on the downhill side and the competition for writers will get increasingly tougher.
This reminds me of an article I read some years back in Writer’s Digest, pointing out that there was no reason to assume novels would be around forever. Epic poetry, after all, was the form of entertainment and literature for centuries; theater was vastly more important in past societies than it is today; there’s no reason novels couldn’t go the same way. I doubt written fiction would actually cease to exist, but I could see it becoming a specialty item for a minority audience (I wouldn’t bet money on that outcome, but I could see it happening).
Which would be a shame: Print (including ebooks) is probably the only form of fiction that’s shaped by one person (even allowing for editors): Drama, TV, movies, online games all usually bear the mark of many hands (if I’m wrong about gaming, please inform me). Nothing wrong with that—if you read this blog, you know I watch TV and movies—but it seems a shame to see novels and short stories dwindle away.
And in practice, what does it mean for writers? Bigger obstacles to getting published, I suppose (and we so need those, right?). And possibly fewer published authors being able to make a living; maybe a hundred years from now, they’ll all be like me, working day jobs and writing on the side.
That would be a shame (it’s depressing enough that I can’t support myself with fiction). It almost makes me feel I’m twenty or thirty years out of my time except that a)if it were thirty years ago, I wouldn’t have TYG; b)I’m old enough to remember writing and editing typewritten manuscripts and computers are MUCH better.