Linear media can be a drag at times, non-linear media keeps you on your toes. Analytic history is written with non-linear use in mind. You can wander around a piece of analytic history and still get a lot of useful information. And Now, The Bad News Simulations and to a lesser extent analytic history, require a fair bit of effort on the part of the user. Film is more popular than print because film requires less effort to get something out of it.
Print is more popular than simulations for the same reason.
You don't have to be terribly observant in a bookstore to see which history books sell best. History books with a lot of pictures are more popular than those with a lot of words. The dozen or so marketing surveys I analyzed each year at SPI also demonstrated the greater popularity of the simple over the complex. But towards the end of the 1970s, and into the 1980s, another phenomena expressed itself. It seems that those people who stayed with wargaming tended to prefer more complex games.