Fight Over People Meters Escalates with Suit by Arbitron
The fight between some minority stations and Arbitron over its audience measurement devices escalated, with the company suing a major Spanish-language broadcaster and a judge’s approval of a temporary restraining order against the defendant. New York Supreme Court Judge Shirley Kornreich in Manhattan agreed Thursday to the company’s request to order Spanish Broadcasting System to resume encoding its broadcasts at nine radio stations in big cities so Arbitron Portable People Meters can measure them. A coalition of SBS and several other major owners of radio stations targeting African Americans and Hispanics said the suit shows Arbitron forces broadcasters to accept “unreasonable terms.”
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“SBS has existing contracts with Arbitron both for the PPM service and to encode its broadcast signals that remain in effect,” Chief Legal Officer Timothy Smith said in a written statement late Thursday. “We expect SBS to honor the terms of its agreements.” An SBS spokeswoman declined to comment and both sides wouldn’t say whether the broadcaster resumed encoding its signals at stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco.
SBS unilaterally shut off encoders at those stations Feb. 3, which Arbitron found out about the next day, the lawsuit said. “Not only was SBS’s act in flagrant breach of the express and unambiguous terms of its contract with Arbitron, but it threatens the integrity of the entire audience measurement system in major markets across the nation. SBS’s decision to stop encoding appears to be its latest tactic in a fee dispute” during which the broadcaster hasn’t paid more than $2.5 million in license fees, the suit said. Kornreich set a hearing in the case for 11 a.m. Tuesday, when the restraining order expires. She ordered SBS to “activate the Arbitron broadcast encoders and resume the encoding of all broadcasts of all radio stations” and to post a $100,000 bond by Tuesday.
The PPM Coalition is making another request, first made in 2008, for the FCC to investigate the methods of the meters, which the group and other opponents say undercount minority audiences. “Arbitron asserts breach of contract without adequately putting the contracts in perspective related to the ongoing proceeding before the Commission and Congress,” the group was expected to say in an FCC filing to have been made late Friday. “With their disclosure, it becomes clear that, because Arbitron is the monopoly provider of radio ratings information in most major markets, broadcasters and advertisers” must take the company’s terms, it added. “Flawed PPM ratings methodology” has had “devastating effects on radio stations serving minority audiences,” said the group, whose members also include Entravision and Univision.