You can set the Recent Visitors via CP. I used "Display seperate from forums and categories".
With "List Locations" set "at top" it should use "pntf_locations[0]".
I haven't worked with BLAM templates before so I wouldn't know. My guess however, is that Bookie did modify public_pntf_summary.pl in some manner.
Compare Bookie's and the UBB files (public_pntf_summary.pl and public_summary.pl) your currently using for 6.5 and see what he did there.