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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.'"
You take the average gain of the last 30 seconds of a program before it goes to commercial, and don't allow the commercials to be any louder than that.
If I can make karaoke and techno music automatically crossfade with my meager skills(link below)
http://www.facebook.com/v/203775860215
Then surely a TV station or broadcast network could make commercials stay at the same gain as the programming.
Unfortunately, dynamic volume control also affects sound in programs you want to watch, not just adverts. Imaging if you were watching a movie, and all the whispers were louder and the explosions quieter. Not so great. "Turn it on only for the adverts" is just making a more complicated and less useful mute button.
As an alternative to legislating the volume of adverts, I propose that before any advert is allowed to air, the director of that advert must be forced to watch it on repeat for 12 hours, locked in a room with a loaded gun and no controls for the TV (with the TV protected by bullet-resistant glass, of course). If the director survives, the ad can be aired.
Many TVs have the ability to auto-level stuff.
But if you've got audio running to a receiver, the receiver has to do it (and likely doesn't).
At best, you've got dynamic range compression modes, which kill off the sound quality for normal programming.
Even if we have a magical loudness law that everyone magically decides to abide by, the latest tactic I've seen is far more annoying.
Commercials now exploit surround sound to the extreme. The soundstage is either panning back and forth and around, or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
What principle? You, as a consumer, have no power in 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. Regulation is good, especially in monopolistic situations
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
That's a rather low standard isn't it? How about making a neutral third party watch the ad for 12 hours on repeat, and only then add the director and a pair of big sticks to the room.
To be fair, what you're doing is almost a Godwin. The huge majority of what Congress does pales in comparison in many ways when put next to wars, and even health care. But many of those things need to be considered, even with bigger, more important things going on.
If you support or decry this proposed law, do so on its own merits. Otherwise, we may as well compare everything to the wars and to healthcare, and ignore a huge range of very real issues which need resolution.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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.
Loud commercials are the perfect reminder that I've forgotten to fast forward the DVR. Commercials that employ this behavior are really just shooting themselves in the foot (not to mention the station's foot).
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.
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.
I doubt very much it has anything to do with the networks.
These "loud commercials" don't have their volume turned up per se; they have their dynamic range compressed (just like a Metallica CD), and the gain increased, making the lows as loud as the highs. This is likely done at the production stage.
The same thing happens when you have your volume cranked up for a quiet scene that's suddenly interrupted by a loud noise, only in the case of these commercials, the whole thing is a "loud noise."
Even if the TV station or cable company are careful to keep everything broadcast safe, it will sound unreasonably loud because *everything* is at peak level, unlike the program you were watching which had highs and lows and a lower average volume.
I'm not sure how you could legislate this problem away.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Using the same reasoning as the law in TFA: Ads are loud as fuck. Thus, any time it fails to skip an ad, it wasn't an obnoxiously loud ad to begin with, so your eardrums are likely intact. While you might say "What about loud bits of shows like explosions!?" no, they've got nothing on ads. I'd watch BSG, loud explosions, etc. Then it goes to ads. "MY LITTLE PONY" is screamed at a volume that absolutely dwarfs the loudest things in the show itself. It's been getting worse lately. Compression can't really make ads any louder than it already has, so the networks are actually turning the shows down more and more so you crank your TV and will get absolutely BLASTED by ads. I don't know why, its making it more and more desirable to skip them.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Regulation is bad. Period.
Yep. No regulation has done a great job historically, just look at the economy. I mean, how else are we supposed to have things like price-fixing and monopolies. Seriously though, why does everything have to be black and white. Personally, I think regulation has a place, but in moderation, where it makes sense. Unfortunately though, no regulation only works when people can regulate themselves, which doesn't appear to be reality.
If the masses stood up and said "we'll support the station that doesn't have loud ads", then those broadcasters would eventually listen. ... The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
That would work if they didn't all do it. Unfortunately I've never seen/heard of a broadcaster who does this, and it appears that many of the commenters haven't. Instead of just saying "regulation bad!", why not be constructive and provide an example?
Similarly, if you have loud neighbors, you should just move and boycott the loud neighbors. Get rid of your HOA rules or local ordinances, because they clearly have a negative impact by being enforced -- in fact, they require even more enforcement than this proposed rule would: local police have to enforce noise rules, whereas this would be a simple, network-level enforced rule, easy to monitor and issue fines for offenders.
So, clearly, this proposed legislation is a bad idea, and noise ordinances are a bad idea as well.
Sarcasm aside, it sure would be nice if the broadcasting industry could have come together and implemented something like this to begin with. It would be really nice if they'd just said, "ok, hey, we're going to normalize our content so that typical conversation will play at 50dB. Commercials will be compressed to have a maximum volume of 55dB." Then I wouldn't have to readjust the volume every time I changed channels, or be blasted out of the room when I have the volume set high for a quiet show on a quiet network, then flip channels and hit a Dodge truck ad on Spike. I guess the invisible hand of the free market hasn't sorted that one out yet.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
..ah, they must be what you poor devils who don't have TiVo or some other DVR have to sit through.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
Also, on a less serious note, ban commercials from using that one blaring alarm clock stock sound that they all love to use. You know, the one that sounds exactly like the alarm clock I had for years, and always makes me feel miserable and pissed off.
The FCC mandates a maximum signal level - let's call it X - that represents the loudest audio that you're allowed to broadcast within the signal specs. Regular television, because it's not run by complete bastards, actually understands that if you have quiet parts of your show then when something gets loud it will actually provoke a response in the viewer. Therefore, they usually broadcast at .5X and save 1X for the absolutely most exciting parts. Commercials, however, are frequently made by complete bastards who just want to bash their message into your ear with all the subtlety of Van Helsing hammering a stake into Dracula's chest. They run their audio at 1X the *entire frigging time*, and that's why the commercial seems "loud." Is it louder than the show you were just watching? No. Is it maximum loud the entire time? Yes.
And now that I look up and read your post again, I realise that I've just said the exact same thing.
MAYBE I SHOULD DO IT AT MAXIMUM VOLUME SO THAT EVERYONE HEARS IT!
You obviously have no idea how the current recession came about. A huge part of it was the deregulation of various markets, coupled with a hands-off approach to markets such as OTC-derivatives, (all in the name of the free market working things out), that allowed the various financial industries to bring us into this mess. Even Greenspan, long a proponent of the hands-off approach, has said(albeit in the aftermath of the meltdown), that he was wrong, and that regulation is needed.
The market will not come up a solution for this, because it is the market that is doing it.
As far as has government regulation ever really worked, enjoy those basic worker's rights, as well as not being forced to work in a factory since you were 3 years old. Enjoy having a choice in a phone company, instead of being tied to Ma Bell. Enjoy having clean air. Enjoy not being banned from a store based on the color of your skin, your last name, your religion, your age, or your sex. Enjoy all those basic rights that you have because the government has stepped in and regulated something in your life.
For every bad law, there are five good laws. Believe it or not, the government is not out to get you through regulation.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Stop watching TV.
POKE 36879,8
IF YOU HATE LOUD COMMERCIALS YOUR GOING TO LOVE THIS!
THE COMMERCIAL KILLER!
Stupid Filter it won't let me shout the whole time, if I stream my tv through
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
They could sample a random amount of tv and find the correct volume, instead they make the commercials super loud. This is why people use ad blockers and stuff like myth's auto-commercial skip. If the advertisers had not become obnoxious these things would not be so popular.
I would be more than happy to buy television shows at the cost the advertisers pay for my set of eyeballs. Stations charge around $20 per thousand viewers for a 30 second spot. So the average 1 hour program has about 17 minutes worth of adds*, meaning 34 30 second add spots. $20/1000 * 34 = $0.68.
That is what I would be willing to pay to watch commercial free tv online, any higher and I will use netflix, torrents or pvrs to get my commercial free tv episodes.
*based off the nonscientific method of average length to watch tv episodes on dvd
My relative has a company that inserts local commercials into cable television. Frequently, local companies produce their own ads for him. Every new commercial is digitized, and he sets the volume on them one by one to be appropriate. However, the only way he figured out "appropriate" was by setting it to a a certain level, listening when it played _live_, and then calibrating future ads to the right volume based on that. His ear is the only standard for his ads precisely because the cable provider isn't doing any volume manipulation or standardization downstream of him.
It's really not a question of how loud the commercials are.
It's how much "compression" and "limiting" are used on the audio. This affects how loud it "seems", even though the needle on the meter never goes higher than the highest peak reached by the show. It's just that the needle seems stuck on that peak.
Compression and limiting are why listening to radio wears you out--it's called "listener fatigue". Your brain has to do extra work to process unnatural sound.
Radio stations do it so that they're the loudest thing on the dial as you scan across. Advertisers do it so that their commercial gets your attention.
Without legislators capable of learning about and understanding compression and limiting, don't look for any legislation that actually solves the problem.
Somewhat off-topic, but as long as we're talking about TV sound, I'm way behind on sending a letter to the people who make "Burn Notice" to thank them for the high quality of the show's audio. The actors don't mumble or get drowned out by sound effects or added music, which is more than I can say for a lot of other shows these days.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Regulation is bad. Period.
Why? Because Ronald Reagan said so? What do you think caused the current financial mess?
The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
The state's business is whatever the voters say it is. If you don't like what they're regulating, go vote for someone else.
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This is exactly the sort of bullshit excuse that broadcasters/advertisers will use to get around any legislation introduced. "The ads really aren't any louder than the content, they only sound louder." Well guess what? THERE'S NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE! Their audience is people, not sound meters, so it does not matter what their instruments read - if the ads sound louder to human ears, then they really are louder.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Now, nobody's saying that marketers are less than human and deserve to be marched into the ocean
I am.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
There are standards for loudness. Dolby, for example, sets one which DVDs using Dolby sound must adhere to. That's why the DVD-Audio release of an album is often much better mixed than the CD version. The CD is made as loud as possible, the DVD has to be at a standard level.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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