Univision’s WOJO-FM tops PPM in Chicago

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Despite criticism of Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM) by Univision executives, the company’s Regional Mexican WOJO-FM Chicago is scoring big. The Chicago Sun-Times notes that the station moved to #1 in the key radio demo of 25-54 in the just-released February PPM numbers.


Univision CEO Joe Uva recently denounced PPM as “inherently biased” against Hispanic and African-American audiences and Univision is part of the PPM Coalition which has been pressing regulators, lawmakers and others to make Arbitron change its methodology. Univision has refused to subscribe to PPM data is some recently commercialized markets, including Miami, San Diego and Phoenix.

It appears to be contractually obligated to encode in some earlier markets, though, including Chicago. Arbitron has been vigorous in enforcing those contract provisions, including legal action to force Spanish Broadcasting System to encode for PPM

Sun-Times columnist Lewis Lazare noted that WOJO had been “hovering around the top of the heap” for some time, but finally moved into the number one spot, 25-54, with the February report. Clear Channel’s Urban AC WVAZ-FM slipped from the top spot to tie with Bonneville’s Hot AC WTMX-FM for #2.

In the 12+ audience numbers which Arbitron makes available for publication, WOJO also rose in February, but finished 5th. CBS Radio’s News WBBM-AM was #1, as usual, followed by WVAZ, Citadel’s Talk WLS-AM and Tribune’s News/Talk WGN-AM.