Spanish Broadcasting System (an undisclosed source) has confirmed that it and Arbitron hope to finalize a tentative out of court settlement to their PPM legal dispute within the next few weeks. Settlement papers are currently being worked out. SBS was to head to arbitration with Arbitron 4/15 over its refusal to pay for PPM data, which SBS claims is flawed, and whether it is also contractually required to have its stations encode for PPM. It was no longer under a court order to keep encoding, so its stations have shut off their encoders. A New York Supreme Court Judge (Judge Kornreich) late last month dissolved her temporary restraining order that had required SBS to encode for PPM. SBS engineers pulled the plug on encoding in New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami.
SBS re-installed encoders in New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami on 4/8.
Arbitron and SBS have requested the hearing with Judge Kornreich be pushed back until later in April to allow the settlement papers to be drafted.
Earlier this month Univision Radio announced it would begin encoding in five markets that converted to PPM last year: Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio and Las Vegas. Even so, the Spanish media giant is not yet subscribing to PPM data for those markets.
