When I heard the news report that radio lis­ten­er­ship had grown two per­cent in the past year, I chuck­led and thought of all the obit­u­ar­ies I’ve read lately for “tra­di­tional” media.

+ Radio is dead.

+ News­pa­pers are dead.

+ Tele­vi­sion is dead.

+ Mag­a­zines are dead.

The killer iden­ti­fied in these death notices is usu­ally “the Inter­net” or “dig­i­tal media”—cold-blooded mur­der­ers with ice water run­ning through their bandwidth.

But wait just a tweetin’ minute—I like the Inter­net and dig­i­tal media, and I think they should be con­sid­ered inno­cent until proven guilty. Don’t con­vict them of killing tra­di­tional media until some­body pro­duces a body.

As an adver­tis­ing agency, we use all these sup­pos­edly “dead” media every day to deliver sell­ing mes­sages for our clients. We know that radio, TV, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, bill­boards and other “older” media are very much alive, and peo­ple are listening/reading/viewing. And if you place a com­pelling adver­tis­ing mes­sage in these media, you get results.

Now a word about the accused. The Inter­net didn’t kill these other media, but it’s tak­ing a big share of their influ­ence. And their audi­ence. And their mar­ket­ing dol­lars. No one can deny that it’s pro­vid­ing us with new and pow­er­ful ways to mar­ket goods and ser­vices, from online adver­tis­ing to social media.

And so?

• Don’t under­es­ti­mate the via­bil­ity of tra­di­tional media as adver­tis­ing vehi­cles. They still deliver audiences.
• On the other hand, don’t wait too long to embrace online mar­ket­ing. It’s a tsunami, and many other folks (your com­peti­tors?) have learned to ride it successfully.
• Make sure your mar­ket­ing mes­sage is clear enough to make an impact in what­ever medium delivers it.

Yes, radio lis­ten­er­ship actu­ally went up two per­cent in the past year. Radio—along with its tra­di­tional media brethren—can echo what Mark Twain said to set the record straight: “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”