Court Orders SBS to Continue PPM Encoding

The New York Supreme Court has ordered Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) to continue to encode its signals for Arbitron's PPM (Portable People Meter) service, following a temporary restraining order (TRO) it imposed on SBS last week.

The dispute between the firms began last year when SBS refused to pay a licence to Arbitron, after claiming that the PPM service was undercounting its ethnic minority listeners.

In December, Arbitron stopped providing SBS with PPM ratings, and the broadcaster responded by ceasing to encode its broadcasts in early February.

After learning that SBS had stopped encoding, Arbitron filed a breach of contract suit against SBS, and the court slapped a TRO on the broadcaster.

Yesterday New York State Supreme Court Judge Shirley Kornreich ordered SBS to continue its PPM encoding. She also ordered Arbitron to post a bond covering potential damages to SBS, and told the two companies to investigate settling the issue through a mediator.

In response to Arbitron's legal action last week, SBS and other members of the minority radio broadcasters' body, the PPM Coalition, complained to the Federal Communications Commission about PPM's failure to count minority audiences.

The PPM Coalition and Arbitron have been in dispute for 18 months over the methodology, measurement, and design of the PPM ratings system.

Today the Coalition said in a statement that it was disappointed with the New York State Court's decision that SBS should encode its programming for Arbitron's 'inaccurate ratings system'.

The organization says the court was only concerned with the contractual relationship between the parties and could not consider the more significant issue of the 'decimation of diversity on the nation's airwaves'.

Web sites: www.arbitron.com and www.spanishbroadcasting.com .