Court Orders Spanish Broadcasting System to Restore Arbitron Encoding

A court has ordered Spanish Broadcasting System to reinstate, at least temporarily, the coding of its radio broadcasts for measurement by Arbitron.

The Supreme Court of New York has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Spanish Broadcasting System and scheduled a hearing Feb. 16 to determine whether to make it permanent. That came in response to Arbitron's request that the court force SBS to start encoding its radio broadcasts under a June 2007 agreement. The encoding allows Arbitron's Portable People Meters (PPMs) to record audience information, a system that relies on encoding. According to Arbitron, it sought the TRO after SBS stopped encoding the broadcasts at stations in New York, Miami, Chicago, L.A. and San Francisco on Feb. 4.