Appearing here in August were a couple of articles about the radio industry and social media. "Does Social Media Pay Radio Dividends?" and "Desperation or Popularity: Buying Friends" were meant to draw attention to radio's use, or lack thereof, of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and the new Google+.

"TV, Magazines, Newspapers, Web, and Mobile are listed, but there's no mention of Radio."

After watching how radio stations used SM, questions needed to be asked regarding the effectiveness of the resources that radio was putting into social media - and, whether or not anyone in the radio industry was actually measuring response from their efforts.

It's all moot now, at least from the perspective of whether the radio industry is considered as using social media. That's not an observation from data I have accumulated but a fact stressed by the absence of radio, as media, in the Bible of advertising, Advertising Age.

As you know, Advertising Age (AdAge) is an extremely popular trade journal. Agency people, media employees, and media buyers pour over the contents of AdAge weekly with an objective of being shown the best ways to advance, or what advertising approaches to avoid. Ideas are planted. Perceptions are germinated. A lack of acknowledgement by this publication generally means you don't exist in the minds of its readers.

I'll leave you a short article to read, to draw your own conclusion. For me, what I'm about to share shows that the radio industry needs to work much harder at generating awareness.

Perhaps it's the timing, when over 2,000 attendees of last week's NAB/RAB "RadioShow" are back in the office, that makes it so meaningful. In today's AdAge article titled "What's the most social of all media?" - they left out "radio." (Free subscription required to read.)

TV, Magazines, Newspapers, Web, and Mobile are listed, but there's no mention of Radio.

For everyone who's bellowing how far the radio industry has come since consolidation, I believe this indicates how much farther radio must go. The absence of radio from the list may be Freudian on the author's part, but it is a very real indication of where radio currently fits into a marketer's plan.

This has to stop. Radio executives must understand that what's happened here is not an isolated instance but a recurring theme that won't change until we see change in the radio industry.

This is not about whether radio is using social media. It's about gaining the recognition that radio trade journals keep saying is there. Unfortunately, those radio industry trades are only read by the choir.

Publications like Advertising Age speak to the ad world at large.

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