Slashdot Mirror
"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.'"
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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."