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"Loud Commercial" Legislation Proposed In US Congress

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-have-my-grandmother's-vote dept.

Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"

7 of 636 comments (clear)

  1. How about... by sycodon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'" ...every time my wife yells at me to "turn down that damned TV" because commercial suddenly starts blasting, the advertising executive for that commercial gets a 24 volt shock?

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  2. Re:I'd much rather... by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd much rather just have intelligent TVs or receivers that turned the volume down upon detecting a commercial...based on the settings *I* want, not what the government thinks is best for me.

    Wait, the goverment says to network or whoever "Hey, make the commercials the same volume as the program" and you are complaining that the government isn't allowing you a choice? They are the one in this case trying to protect your choice of volume level!

    And sorry, forcing everyone to buy a new TV for a feature when the government can implement for essentially free for everyone and at no real cost to any party involved is being technologically elitist and if you don't see how the corps just love your "solution" to death...

    I take care of an elderly parent, when the commercial starts blaring at a normal volume, it is very annoying, at their volume, it's painful.

  3. Re:Not that simple by MindPrison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He's right you know, the volume IS the same. ...the trick they use however, is to speak at the maximum level before audio clipping occurs, and that's pretty darn loud.

    Not only that, they also pump up the middle tones (The audible sound spectrum is ca. 100hz to 20 khz), and the frequencies at 500-3khz is where speech is located, you can make it sound like it's 10 times louder - and STILL keep the same volume. ;)

    This is a well known "secret" in the business.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  4. Re:Bad idea. by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Take the average of the audio energy in the base program (divided into 32-64 frequency bands across the ten octaves above 20Hz). Weight the energy using the Fletcher-Munson curve for the overall average energy level. If the time-average of the audio in the commercial sums to more than the time-average energy in the base program by more than 10%, auto-file a violation report. Fine as needed. You can do it automatically.

    In fact, by expanding (if you need to, look up "compression") the audio range and decreasing the volume, you can automatically adjust the volume to within a comfortable range. It's really not much of a trick to do either.

    I tend to think the legislation would be better because it would be a global solution to a global annoyance with very little downside. If you have to depend on your commercial being LOUD to get people to notice, you have something wrong. Really, all you need to do is make the people in your commercial more naked.

    --
    That is all.
  5. Re:I'd much rather... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In defense of the advertisers, how are they supposed to know how loud the commercials should be? The producers aren't given copies of the shows beforehand; it's not like they know ahead of time.

    There are broadcast standards that define that sort of thing, part of the same standards that define the color gamut, the number of effective pixels, etc.

    Personally I LOVE loud commercials - it makes auto-detecting them easy which makes thing like mythtv's automatic commercial remover work better.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  6. Re:I'd much rather... by Khyber · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "but there's no reason why the network can't apply some volume normalization."

    Normalization implies you have other sources to compare sound levels against to maintain a constant volume. Guess what isn't a regular thing in the TV industry, since they focus mainly on video and not audio? Bingo! Normalization.

    Also:

    "Or why televisions or HTPCs can't do volume normalization."

    That would require TVs to have a copy of the sound track from prior programs to perform normalization. On top of that, it would have to receive the data and decode/compute against prior shows to do normalization. That's going to take loads of power. Also, that will introduce so many potential piracy holes. Ain't happening. If simple ol' me with a GED can figure this out, I'll bet the engineers already figured it out.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  7. Re:I'd much rather... by mikael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My TV does volume normalisation - it has a 10-second memory of how the sound was, and uses that to stop any sudden jumps in loudness. But the advertisers/networks seem to have got wise to that and add a 10-second gap between the break in the program and the first advert.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads