This article addresses the relationships between media, media use and language retention. In pursuing this aim, we explore the utility of ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) as a fruitful conceptual tool. The extant research on the relationship between the media and language retention and development provides an encouragement to pursue in more detail the role of media in this process: in other words to address more explicitly the features of media operation, and their relationship to audiences, which interface with the dynamics of EV. Based on four case studies of bilingual communities, the article concludes that media can be an important vehicle in maintaining and supporting EV. The extent to which this can be reached depends mostly on objective factors, such as the institutional completeness of the media landscape. (Contains 4 notes, 3 tables, and 2 figures.)