CALM Act approved by Congress, mandates TV ad volume levels stay level

By on Dec 3, 2010 at 11:19 AM
News December 3, 2010

Finally, Congress passes a piece of legislation that citizens on both the right and left side of the political spectrum can get behind. Late yesterday, Congress approved the CALM (Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation) Act, which “requires TV advertisers to ensure their ads don’t play at a volume louder than regular TV programming.” The new bill requires ad makers to use “industry technology” to prevent the volume annoyance from occurring.

“Consumers will no longer have to experience being blasted at,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from California. “It’s a simple fix to a huge nuisance.”

The bill currently awaits President Obama’s signature. Once enacted, commercial makers will have one year to comply with the new law.

Read

Tags:
, , , , , , ,
40 Comments

Related Articles

  • Al harrington

    Wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men!
    Wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men!
    Wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men!

  • Sweet James Jones

    No I won’t be able to hear it in the bathroon.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Mc/100001605142837 Thomas Mc

    But who will enforce it? Without enforcement it’s a meaningless law.

  • Aaaaaaaalik G

    again Europe one step ahead.

    Now US advertisers will move to “successful in EU” methods of selecting sound spectrum so that human ear perceives ads louder. This way ads will be within required dB levels, but still sound louder than the program they interrupt.

    In EU there are works (not sure at what stage) to trim usage of such spectrum; additionally volume of bradcast ads has to be adjusted to average volume level of the scene in the movie or program just before the commercial break.

  • Chuck

    This may indeed simply do nothing or even compound the issue.
    Commercials are NOT technically louder than program material now… FCC rules have mandated a maximum gain/volume level on ALL content for years. The issue is commercials compress (a technical audio term) their ad’s sound to be an average (all the same level) and then boos that to the maximum allowed by the FCC. Typical show programming is dynamic in volume (has quiet and loud moments) where commercials are produced to only have one long loud moment – compression.

    Not actually having read the legislature and just going on the description above, this bill sounds like mostly lip service. If they really wanted to make a difference, they’d put a limit to the level an ad can be that is somewhere in the middle or less of where programming can be, or make the ad limit a percent (i.e. 50%) of the programming limit.

1 2
blog comments powered by Disqus