Portable People Meter (PPM) ratings in the Orlando market are "all screwy," according to an Arbitron spokesperson. And at the heart of the problem - a disgruntled downsized engineer.Arbitron's VP of Colossal Errors, Boniva Brittlebone, explained to All The Excess! what happened. "Apparently an engineer at the Monolith cluster was laid off, and before he left the building, he switched the PPM encoders for all six stations as a parting shot."
Vern Everright, manager of the Tampa, Orlando, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Key West, and Omaha Monolith clusters, said "(outgoing engineer) Kyle Minogue was one of those employees I thought I could trust when he asked to say goodbye to a few people. So I overrode our usual policy of having fired staffers handcuffed and escorted out of the building by an armed guard."
"I did find it odd that he wanted to say goodbye to the equipment rack in master control," Everright added.
Minogue switched encoders for all six Monolith properties, causing erroneous detections by the electronic meters. A person listening to Country WTYT was recorded as hearing Brokered Ethnic WPQH, and vice versa. Top 40 WWLL (Lips FM) and Gold WDUU-AM had their encoders switched, and Urban WUVB (The Vibe) and Spanish Contemporary WHWU-AM (La Mierda) traded PPM boxes.
When PPM numbers were released, stations and agencies were horrified. A few of the results: WPQH led the market with an 11.6 share for its mostly Korean and Vietnamese programming. Close behind was the Bitchin' Oldies format on WDUU-AM at 10.9. WTYT, the perennial number one station in the market, notched an 0.6 (21st place). And The Vibe went from fourth place in diary ratings to 18th in PPM.
Arbitron says it is considering whether to re-issue the market ratings, or just shrug it off as "one of those things."
Vibe PD Hector O. Blivious told A.T.E.! "I'm so relieved to find out what happened. I know urban stations have taken a pounding in PPM, but I'm glad to know our big drop wasn't because of sucky programming."
