Your cynicism aside, you point out to a truism about human nature, one described by Sagan and Shermer in great detail: our fundamental need to believe in wierd (and irrational) things! When you cite the way "publicity" works, you are describing to a tee just how the media favors reporting pseudoscience over science - part of the nature of our reptilian-brain antecedents.
All is not lost, however, because the steady and now exponential march of science and scientific thinking will inexorably burst all of the pseudoscience bubbles, from Astrology to Zen, in relatively short order (as historical time frames may be measured).
So while we still have a U.S. President who appeals to the lowest common denominator as he says "the jury is still out" on evolution, the juries that seem to really count more and more - academia, the technologists and scientists, and those who most of the world's leaders really look to - even in furtherance of nefarious undertakings - have unanimously reached a verdict as to the value of science and scientific thinking. Even those who still ascribe to old world religions and their magical ways of thinking - even President Bush in practice (but for "save a stem cell" here and there) opt for science over pseudoscience. Perhaps the last vestiges of pseudoscience then are popular culture and religious thinking (no small vestiges at that!). The battle of reason against magical thinking is far from won, and far from easy, we readily concede.
So, of course we have not won the war yet. And the general public here in the U.S. and around the world still wallows in a swamp of pseudoscientific hogwash. Sure, we still must fight for every precious minute of enlightened teaching (e.g., against the creationists, those who wish to merge Church and State, etc.). But the JREF's efforts, like the old and new Million Dollar Challenge (and its related challenges), the TAMs, those marvelous work of Sagan, Dawkins, Shermer, Randi, Steve Allen, and so many others, the work of CSICOP, the Skeptics Society, and so many others, all are part of an ever-growing movement, just as secular humanism, with its underpinnings in ethical culture, has continued to flourish and bloom through years of world war, genecide, totalitarianism, and the threat of nuclear obliteration.
Yes, certainly the media needs a corrective revolution, as does mankind. But we must see each enlightened action (like the Million Dollar Challenge) as a little victory, in the same sense as - to quote the late Robert Kennedy - these activities are like "tiny ripple of hope crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring...[building] a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistence."
How fitting that TAM5's theme is "Skepticism and the Media." Your cynicism is noted here (but not really noteworthy).
I'm not sure I share your optimism... The last couple of hundred years has seen the demise of a number of false beliefs and dangerous ideas, but also the rise of almost an equal number of equally useless ideas (spiritualism, Homeopathy et al.)
