KTCK didn't Encode Signal ???

[zone_guy]

So, listening to The Ticket this morning, I heard the Musers announce that in there move to the new Victory Park Studios, their engineers DIDN'T ENCODE their signal for PPM.  Apparently, it took them 2 weeks to realize the problem...UGH!  So, for the first two weeks of the January 2012 book, they are going to have a 0.0!  Yikes!

You can listen to the segment at The UnTicket: 

http://www.theunticket.com/pulling-back-the-curtain-musers-explain-the-2012-encoding-snafu/

How in the world is that possible?

Well, I guess the good news is that The Fan or ESPN will FINALLY beat the Ticket. 

Are they the first station in the PPM era to screw up that badly?

Surely, someone has been fired, right? 

Does anyone know the "inside" story of the Cumulus Catastrophe at Victory Park?

[BenB]

WOW!!!  That's greatness!

[DavidEduardo]

So, listening to The Ticket this morning, I heard the Musers announce that in there move to the new Victory Park Studios, their engineers DIDN'T ENCODE their signal for PPM.  Apparently, it took them 2 weeks to realize the problem...UGH!  So, for the first two weeks of the January 2012 book, they are going to have a 0.0!  Yikes!

I checked the weeklies, which for January are 1/5 to 1/11 and 1/12 to 1/18, and the weeklies are "normal" within the range that this station wobbles. Further, the last week of Holida, ending the 4th of January, also has normal range numbers.

Sounds like they were encoded, but "making it seem" that they were not as an excuse to get listeners to "tell a friend" to listen and to openly discuss ratings.

Interesting. I'm going to check in with an Arbitron rep and see what they say.

[dawireless]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

[DavidEduardo]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

There is no evidence that they did not encode. January Week 1 and January Week 2 had normal numbers, not zeros (subscribers get weekly numbers).

[w9wi]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type   what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly? 

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately.  (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes)   Do they not do that in radio?

[DavidEduardo]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

There is no evidence that they did not encode. January Week 1 and January Week 2 had normal numbers, not zeros (subscribers get weekly numbers).

The latest news is that the encoding... or lack of same... was affected in a five day period at the end of Week 3 and the beginning of Week 4. The dates mentioned by the station talent's post are off, but there really appears to have been a period where no encoding took place. As far as Arbitron is concerned, it's the same as being off the air.

[Scott Fybush]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type   what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly? 

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately.  (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes)   Do they not do that in radio?

I don't think Arbitron does any sort of constant monitoring for PPM data in each market. But they provide both encoder boxes and decoder boxes to stations, and the decoders can (and should) be wired up to send an immediate alarm if PPM encoding isn't being detected. It's really hard to imagine that going unnoticed at a station owned by a major group in a top-10 market.

[DavidEduardo]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type   what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly? 

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately.  (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes)   Do they not do that in radio?

The Nielsen system is wired, thus the ability to do overnight ratings. Any deviation from the norm can be seen... and here I am guessing... by means of an algorithm that sets off a warning for any unusual occurrence or from monitoring of the outlets themselves. The Nielsen "set top boxes" actually know what they are tuned to, and can send this data back very quickly. The PPMs are portable and only send data home each night if they are docked in a charger (although wireless ones are in development). Just in case, I am checking with Arbitron to see if they have any specific systems in place.

I do know of one nameless station that somehow took the encoder out of the audio chain, and the station did not know about it until the first weeklies came back with horrific numbers... they called Arbitron... and the first question was, "is your encoder working?"

[DavidEduardo]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type   what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly? 

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately.  (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes)   Do they not do that in radio?

I don't think Arbitron does any sort of constant monitoring for PPM data in each market. But they provide both encoder boxes and decoder boxes to stations, and the decoders can (and should) be wired up to send an immediate alarm if PPM encoding isn't being detected. It's really hard to imagine that going unnoticed at a station owned by a major group in a top-10 market.

I've heard of a handful of cases when PPM was new where the alarm was either hooked to a lamp in engineering and not noticed for days. In several others, the alarm sent a text to the engineer, who said "I'll fix it Monday after the weekend." In all these cases, it took some training for everyone to realize that not encoding was about the same as being off the air.