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"Loud Commercial" Legislation Proposed In US Congress
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.'"
What principle? You, as a consumer, have no power in this.
Yes, we do. We do not have to watch channels that have tactics we do not like.
We can circumvent advertising with digital recorders.
We have a lot of power over this.
Every broadcaster does it, and even if some didn't, you can't "vote with your wallet" short of just not paying for TV.
That's a valid response. If the masses stood up and said "we'll support the station that doesn't have loud ads", then those broadcasters would eventually listen.
Regulation is good, especially in monopolistic situations
Regulation is bad. Period. The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
The networks won't do shit when you or anyone complains. You might as well sit in your room and masturbate to "Atlas Shrugged" again; it'll have the same effect. And they all engage in this practice, too; the mythical free market isn't going to fix this. So either the FCC can do something about it and actually solve the problem, or the problem won't get solved.
Now this... THIS SHOULD BE MODDED UP. It is the first comment to not be spewed by some idiot with his head in his asshole.
because then, advertisers will pay less for ads and TV stations will either need more ads for the same amount of broadcasting or will go out of business.
Yea, cuz you know, the $60/month from a few million people in cable subscription costs couldn't possibly be anywhere near enough to run a cable company.
I mean god, I don't know how I would survive without $60 million every month! Right now I'm expecting next month to only make 59 million, and am so disgusted and sickened how people don't want to allow me to scream in their ear that I think I'll just take my ball and go home, closing the business down.
*rolls eyes*
You've begged the question. It's not accepted practice because the law forbids it. There are no accepted illegal practices.
A better attack would have been to point to an legal but unethical business behavior, but given the number of business that promote "If it's not illegal, it's ethical," positions, and the assertion that business is fundamentally amoral, and the lamentations about the lack of business ethics, that attack appears quite weak.
I didn't say that loud ads were a market inefficiency. I assumed we were talking about regulation to prevent and correct monopolies, since the grandparent was said that regulation was good in monopolistic situations, and you said that regulation was axiomatically bad.
I believe solutions to such problems should not involve the state as they have too much power already. We don't need yet more laws in the law books. We don't need to justify them taking even more taxes off us.
Taxes are low in the United States, even in a historical context. And given the deficit and the exponential growth since 1980 of the National Debt since Reaganomics. (" "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" -- Dick Cheney) we need increased taxes to pay as we go. (Cutting spending is a non-starter as government programs are already underfunded and popular. Witness California's perpetual budget crisis with Tax Rates held at 1970's levels due to a 2/3s vote to pass any budget or tax increase, an budgetary obstruction GOP holding a whopping 35% in the legislature, and a majority of the budget being mandatory spending due to popular (and popularly abused) initiative process.
Futhermore, given that the current economic crisis was spawned by deregulation of the banking and investment industries. (Just like how the California Power Crisis was was spawned by the industry written deregulation of the power industry, less regulation is demonstrably not a good thing in all cases.
I'm not talking about money spent in elections. The vast majority of high office candidates are preselected by the parties, so it doesn't matter who is elected
You do understand that we have primary elections right? That means the people vote.
The only successful exception one can point to is Ron Paul, and there, "success" is defined by not getting his way except once in a blue moon... he just manages to hang on in an environment where his outlook is steadfastly ignored.
Well Ron Paul wasn't a success at all. He failed to win any state, or even finish in the top three. Outside of Digg, he simply didn't have any traction.
Nice to see you still like hanging on posting anonymously from one account then moding coaxial down while moding yourself up as informative. You really are pathetic if you follow some stranger around and wasting all your mod points.
Go masturbate to your dad's picture.