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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.'"

3 of 636 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.
  3. 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.