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House Passes TV Commercial Volume Bill
eldavojohn writes "About a year ago, legislation was introduced to control the volume of TV commercials. It passed the Senate in September and has now been passed in the House as well. This problem has dated back to the 1960s, but after the president signs the bill, broadcasters will be subject to regulations of the Advanced Television Systems Committee on what is 'too loud.' Of the last 25 quarterly reports from the FCC, this has been the number one consumer complaint in 21 of them. Within a year, you should start to notice a difference, with commercials no longer forcing you to turn down the TV volume during breaks in your regular programming."
its not only an american problem. you chance up on a video on youtube or something else around the net, and suddenly -kaboooom. your house is vibrating with some shitty american commercial. volume just ramps up like there's no tomorrow.
that was an affliction for everyone. not only americans. ironic that not the free market, but REGULATION is what's fixing that crap.
Read radical news here
...that Billy Mays didn't have to live to see this day.
glad that this is the type of important stuff that is making it to Obama's desk. I hated loud commercials back when I still watched some TV, but did this really need and act of Congress to solve? sheeesh
Sigh ... Shaw Cable just cranks the volume of commercials up. Given the undue influence the Shaw family has, it's unlikely this will change.
lots of comskip programs out there. I'm using a video editor called 'video redo' that does seamless cuts at the mpg mode and only re-encodes the cut/join part. ideal for saving edited tv shows.
I have my mythtv capture system save the .mpg file, video redo edits it and it has its own comskip feature that locates and lets me tweak the 'red areas' where the commercials are. it has a 'plot mask' to black out most of the screen so you don't have to view the content while editing.
life is good again ;) I have not seen a commercial since I started using this. shows are now 20 minutes shorter, too.
this is nice for those who don't have pvr's of some sort, but the war has already forced most of us to TOTALLY eliminate ads.
just like firefox and adblock/noscript make browsing more pleasant again, same with comskippers.
one channel seems to put all its commercials in SD and the show, itself, is in HD. let me thank them so much for making it TRIVIAL to detect when commercials come on. danke again for being stupid, tv execs.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I noticed the commercials on the videos I watch online are also louder than the content I care about. I'm not sure the bill covers that forum - which is probably why the broadcasters agreed to let congress move forward with it.
My grandma had an even better solution: mute the TV during commercials.
Palm trees and 8
...but it seems that even if the volume level didn't actually change, commercials were clearly 'pitched' higher, giving them a louder apparent volume?
-Styopa
To honor the late, great, shouting huckster!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
or will they turn up the volume of content to match it and lose all dynamic range of the programming. You get one guess. Movies are going to be so much fun to watch when a pin dropping and a bomb going off have the same levels.
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
ironic that not the free market, but REGULATION is what's fixing that crap.
How is that ironic? The problem with commercials providing revenue to copyrighted material in a "free market" as you call it is completely not "free market." But without getting into pedantry about how television is one of the furthest things from a free market as possible, it makes complete sense since if you want to watch some video, you must watch the commercial. You want to watch The Office on NBC.com? Well, you have to sit through a particular commercial. You can't switch to another better, quieter, more appealing commercial. If commercials were a product then your 'free market' quip might have some meaning but when they're pretty much being shoved down your throat by the idea and design of marketing, your selection choice is instantly removed. Simply put, I can't watch whatever I want and request only commercials that appeal to me. If I did, I'd only be watching Adult Swim commercials if I ever saw any. Government regulation was the only way to combat this. Television commercials have always been approaching Geocities quality with flashing marquee tags, blinking tags, dancing jesus', flying toasters and music that cranks up to eleven and plays once the page loads.
My work here is dung.
Can we make the same for movies as well? I'm fed up with turning up the volume to hear the dialogue, then getting blasted with the stock footage of an airplane landing.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Let me be the first to say that I'm glad that our senators and representatives have passed this. With all the other issues this country has to solve, I'm glad to see our congressmen reach across the aisle and work together in a spirit of bipartisanship to solve major issues like this. It gives one a deep sense of optimism for the future of our country.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I didn't read TFB, but: How do they measure? As far as I'm concerned, it is not trivial, taking into account tricks put to use by tv stations to fool measurement. Where I live, similar law has been in effect. Loudness is measured by standarised means (ITU-R BS1770-1). And guess what - nothing changed, because no proper equipment has been passed to the regulators...
It's ironic because in a genuine free market situation there wouldn't be any commercials like that because people would go to a source without that commercial or without any commercials at all. And that's essentially what Adam Smith envisioned, things like copyrights and patents were a violation of how he saw a market functioning.
I just spent $2150 for nothing...
According to the latest poll (How much TV do you watch in a week, on average? ), we hardly watch any TV!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
What, was this sitting on someone's desk since 1980? Everyone has a remote with a mute button now!
I mean, why worry about 9.6% unemployment, $1.3 trillion of deficit spending, $13 trillion in debt, a falling USD, the highest rate of troop casualties ever in Afghanistan, Congressmen ignoring the very tax laws they create, and $200 million junkets to India? We've got TEE VEE and commercials to address!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
BILLY MAYS HERE for TechKnob! Are you tired of hearing really loud commercials? Well, hear them no more with the patented deluxe Commercial Volume Reducer! Using advanced commercial detection technology, it automatically detects when a commercial is coming on, and reduces the volume 50% for you! Available for $19.95, call now!
I am officially gone from
In Russia, commercials watch you.
Not necesesarily.
The source would have to be able to have funding. About the only way I could think of that, is some combination of heavy handed product placement in exchange for cash from the manufacturer/merchant, and users paying to see the content. The former wouldn't produce enough, and the latter, is available in many cases - people still take the free-with-commercials option often enough.
I like the suggestion someone else made (or at least implied) - the ability to switch to a different commercial on a web video if one was too annoying, would be nice.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Seriously between my DVR and Netflix I haven't watch a commerical in at least two years.
So.. they passed a bill to control tv commercial volume but they couldn't find the time to pass the health bill for 9/11 workers suffering from chronic illnesses.
Seems perfectly honest, at least they have a sence of priorities.
Is it just me, or is it funny as hell to think about a bunch of old people in Congress griping about TV commercial volumes? I don't know a lot of non-old people who still watch TV.
I don't respond to AC's.
What are these "commercial" things that this is referring to? They sound horrible. Is that something from the 90's?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Don't we have volume levelers on our TVs yet?! Well, let's hope the government can collect billions in fines to make this all worthwhile.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Of course this also means that when I fall asleep watching a TV show I will now sleep the entire night instead of being wakened up by the obnoxious commercial.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Ignoring whether or not you are in favor of this (I kind of like it myself)...
The U.S. Congress does not have the right to regulate the audio volume of your television.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Stopped reading after I realized you're one of those "copyrights r evil" idiots.
I can't say that I'm surprised at all of the snark and the sniping. Yeah, there are a million dozen things that our reps should be fixing. This isn't our nations biggest problem. It's not even in the top hundred thousand.
That being said; this is a very small tidbit of proof that 'the system', for all its pitfalls and failings, still works. People complained about a problem (however minor), the free market decided not to fix it, so the government stepped in and played the angry parent and said "since you won't fix this on your own, and the apparent will of the people says that you should, we'll make you."
That's kinda how things work. At least the major TV makers & advertisers didn't buy up enough votes to get this canned. You may now return to your rantings and ravings about ugly americans and your canned diatribes about the failures of our elected officials.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Now whats going to wake me up when I fall asleep on the couch? An Infomercial?
I don't watch TV but when I do watch video online that has that kind of loud unskipable commercial I just mute it preemptively. (also applies to stuff like the TED start music)
If it was a reasonable volume I might keep it on and just ignore it but this way they just lose me altogether, I don't get why they'd want to do that.
The free market exists, in that, in exchange for being able to watch The Office on NBC "for free", you agree to at least have their commercials broadcast into your house. In the free market, if you don't like it, you don't watch. Or better yet, make your own television show. The fact that your desire to watch The Office outweighs your desire to NOT watch commercials does not mean the market is not free.
That will put a lot of people who lack any useful skills to work, and lower the unemployment levels!
If you claim to be a proponent of free markets, which means markets without any regulation whatsoever, then you must reject this law. According to your ideology, people want extremely loud commercials, because those people watch those commercials. To some people, it is circular logic to say that people get what they want, and want what they get. To those people, the way to determine what a person wants is to ask them what they want, which is the underpinning of this law; but to free market proponents, people by definition want loud commercials, and the evidence is that people don't completely reject the entire medium of television because of those loud commercials.
If you claim to support free markets, then speak up now and come out against this law. This is government meddling in private enterprise.
Right? Eh? Right, you libertarian Slashdotters? The fact that loud commercials didn't bring on the death of television is proof positive that people love and want loud commercials, right?
Put a master limiter on your main out. Problem solved. What? You mean everyone doesn't run their home entertainment through a DAW?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Some people seem to be putting this off as an example of a market failure when in truth it's not.
Many TVs have features that allow you to level out the sound from programming to commercials (kind of an old school ad blocker). That is how the market has seen fit to address this problem.
Also, the market hasn't done more than than because this is more of a minor annoyance than a real problem (and yes, I do find it annoying, especially when I have a sleeping kid in my arms and they get woken up by the commercials). It's also not like the sound is getting louder and louder and louder over the years.
Markets work, just not always in the way that people expect.
If commercials were a product then your 'free market' quip might have some meaning but when they're pretty much being shoved down your throat by the idea and design of marketing, your selection choice is instantly removed. ... Government regulation was the only way to combat this.
My approach was to switch to Netflix, no government regulation necessary. Seems to me that if anyone is still paying to watch tv with loud commercials, it's because it's worth it to them.
I represent the commercial volume is too damn high party.
Maybe when the house and the senate are done with this trivial bit of legislation, they can start on people who talk too loud in the theatre....
Smith made the same mistake Marx did. He assumed people WOULDN'T be greedy, selfish, self-absorbed bastards only concerned with elevating themselves and fuck everybody else. Both of their idealized systems require idealized people to make it work. A genuine free market is the same thing as the workers' paradise, an impossible, and naive, fantasy.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
This makes me incredibly happy. I can't tell you how many times I've dozed off while watching TV only to be rudely awaken by some idiot commercial.
So the stations can just air Michael Bay films not worry about changing a thing?
Sir Dinky
That's only true if one considers the programs to be fungible. Personally, anyone who tries to tell me "If you don't like the loud commercials during Big Bang Theory, then go watch the Jersey shore instead. Those commercials are quiet" is not only missing the point, but deserves to be kicked in the groin.
I work in the cable industry and administer a local ad insertion system. Periodically, I field calls from viewers complaining about the volume on ads.
Viewers don't realize their ears are tricking them. While there are offenders out there, most ads volume levels don't peak any higher then the surrounding program. Advertisers just tend to compress their audio range near the peak.
When you watch a TV program, you see 5-7 minutes with an audio ranging from crickets to explosions. When you watch a 30 second ad, there isn't time for that kind of range. Pay attention to a conversation around you today. You'll hear loud parts and quiet – even silent – parts. Now imagine that conversation if one of the participants is talking over everyone else and speaking very quickly. They're not any louder then the other participants, but they seem loaned (and annoying).
And a final point to make: Quality programs aren't a God-given right. Good shows are paid for by advertisers, and your attention is the product being sold by the TV station to the advertiser.
I heard some commercial skipping algorithm uses audio volume as a cue to detect start of commercial. Doesn't this ... "blessing" breaks that algorithm? If incompetence isn't a factor in this, I am incline to think that this is a plot by the broadcasters to break some of the commercial skipping algorithms...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Maybe I just got used to obnoxious commercials, after listening to "HI! I'M TOM PADGAM!" car commercials in Oklahoma City, everything seems to be mild, but the biggest offenders now seem to be the TV shows that compress everything like it was a hip-hop CD. The commercials are now quieter than some of the programs.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
That's all well and good, but glancing over the legislation itself leaves me wondering; does the phrase "other multichannel video programming distributor" properly encompass web-based video streams? Because if not, then the legislation will do absolutely no good at all; I can skip commercials altogether on broadcast television by way of my DVR, but that's not true of the over-driven commercials within the full episode streams of Fox.com, et al.
(Of course, I suppose I could always just torrent the show instead, and not watch any commercials at all...)
Interesting. I thought Adam Smith specifically supported patents and copyrights. Could you show me where in his works he said he doesn't? Please, go look it up. See what he actually believed, read Wealth of Nations yourself. Despite the libertarian caricature of him, Adam Smith believed that government regulations were absolutely vital to the functioning of a free market, that government should grant copyrights and patents, enforce contract law, build roads and infrastructure, and basically do everything it is now doing in the economic sphere.
Adam Smith WAS NOT a libertarian. Do not try to rewrite history to make him one.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ban commercials. That might help to wrest the U.S. government from its Corporate Overlords.
I mean, I'm really no expert when it comes to TV broadcasts and video in general, but if commercials have a distinctive quality (i.e. louder sound), couldn't this quality be used to identify and avoid them? Like, cut them out when you're recording something? Or have your set allow you to change to another channel during the commercials and automatically switch you back when it's over?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been muting commercials for the past 20 years. I had no idea they were still too loud.
One of the OP links summarizes the law thus:
"The new law will require them all to comply with standards approved by the Advanced Television Systems Committee. Those standards have, up to this point, been characterized as mere 'recommended practices'; once the President signs the CALM Act, those standards will be The Law."
That article then links to "ATSC Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television", which is Document A/85:2009, 4 November 2009. Lots of observations and experiments, and not having the time to read through in detail yet, I'm not sure if it will fix the problem or if it will give ammunition to the FCC to rap knuckles when they get complaints.
Still, the good news is that the politicians aren't making their own standards up, but rather elevating a document done by people who understand the topic.
Another problem is commercials often use "alarm" or "bell" sounds that are normally used to notify you of important things, such as the sound of an alarm clock, a microwave timer, a fire alarm, a doorbell, etc. This just raises your stress level and adrenaline for nothing.
Two wars, wikileaks, domestic spying, housing market collapse, 15,000 unreported civilian casualties in Iraq, and a congress that passes a TV volume bill. Jeez, install a volume normalizer already. You don't need the government to do this.
Smith made the same mistake Marx did. He assumed people WOULDN'T be greedy, selfish, self-absorbed bastards only concerned with elevating themselves and fuck everybody else. Both of their idealized systems require idealized people to make it work. A genuine free market is the same thing as the workers' paradise, an impossible, and naive, fantasy.
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Heck, even his "invisible hand" quote could be seen as protectionist these days.
“Every individual...generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”
Smith is best seen as a leading economist of his time, and not some idealist visionary.
Will the loudness of a particular ad be determined by...
...its peak loudness...
...or its mean loudness...
"blah blah BLAH!! blah blah blah" = BLAH!!
"blah blah BLAH!! blah blah blah" = BLAH
If its the first one, it's all good. If it's the second, this could get ugly. (The specs are posted but tl;dr and I'm no audio engineer.)
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The source would have to be able to have funding. About the only way I could think of that, is some combination of heavy handed product placement in exchange for cash from the manufacturer/merchant, and users paying to see the content. The former wouldn't produce enough, and the latter, is available in many cases - people still take the free-with-commercials option often enough.
Google "Texaco Star Theater"
For the UK customers, you will know this phenomenon by the Cillit Bang adverts... "HI! I'M BARRY SCOTT!" - which were taken off air and replaced with a much more mild (and British) advert with the same guy NOT having to shout his name at me, because the company image was going down the pan exactly because of the stupid advert being too loud and yelling.
And the UK passed one of these rules years ago, I believe, and that was with only a year or two of stupidly loud adverts on some satellite channels.
The British are used to yelling - I posted about that very thing only a day or two ago - but what we're not used to is being yelled at by someone who wants us to buy something. When that happens, it's almost inevitable that your sales will suffer.
A free market in Adam Smith's conception thereof *does* require that full information be available to market participants. Imperfections in quality of information are thus a major impediment to realizing the better parts of his vision.
These media guys are businessmen, not lunatics - they will listen to people voting with their wallets - if they can hear said people.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The "free market" did fix that problem. Commercials were so annoying that many DVR's introduced a 30 second skip. Also, the increased volume allowed some products to have an auto-skip feature that detected change in volume and automatically skip it...
Your beloved "regulation" just killed this handy technical workaround. Thanks.
Furthermore, the "free market" also came up with mutliple ways to watch commercial free, or reduced commercial TV. I hate commercials so some shows I buy (or rent) on iTunes. I also watch a number of things on Netflix streaming, also commercial free. And although I do not like Hulu, the commercials there seem much more subdued and far less in quantity than on TV.
So basically the market has given us all this choice but you choose instead to screw with what can be broadcast. Today it's technical standards, tomorrow it's content mocking the president. Enjoy that world when we get there, because you asked for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The regulation is going to kill that since it partially relies on the jump in volume they are regulating away. Going to be much less reliable now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
4k homes is actually a pretty good sample size; increasing it to 40k isn't going to give you 10X better results, especially if they're selecting the 4k properly.
For example, in the presidential election - 1.5k people equates to a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5%.
The 4k homes? Around a 1.5% margin of error at a 95% confidence level. 40k homes would get you a .5% margin at that 95% confidence level.
Still, you might be right - consider digital cable, with the 'average' home getting over a hundred channels. While a 1.5% error rate is fine for somebody getting around a dozen channels, 1.5% is probably too coarse a measurement to even detect some of the least popular non-pay per view channels, as in the viewership is less than the margin of error.
Then again, you're not really looking at 4k homes out of 105M, you're looking at, daily, 192k 'viewing slots', out of 2.5B possible. That would get you down to even more accurate results, when you figure in the log aspect.
I don't read AC A human right
Can Congress also tell the RIAA to cool it with the loudness war?
it's especially jarring when one's collection shuffles between modern-mainstream and other material.
Hmm, I ought to check some more waveforms for indie stuff to see if they brickwall at all or as much.
Classic stuff, even classic loud stuff (like Zeppelin), didn't need it anyway. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yeah, not a *huge* priority for this country, but I suppose it makes sense to fix small obvious stuff like this while the arguing over big complex issues continues.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
...when, in a world of people starving, being butchered, being sent to jail for doing the right thing... ...that people think that loud commercials are oppression.
Seems to me that if anyone is still paying to watch tv with loud commercials, it's because it's worth it to them.
Agreed. Me, I don't watch live TV anymore because I value my time higher than the $20 or so for netflix vs the inconvience of live TV - of which commercials vie with not being able to pause or watch on my schedule. Plus, many of the shows I like are only on cable - but netflix is a LOT cheaper than the $100/month and needing a DVR that cable would require.
I understand that HULU has more recent TV shows, but because of the ads and the 'until recently' limited back catalog(which you have to pay a fee to get, and just like cable, still get ads), I'm sticking with netflix. Haven't exhausted my queue yet, so it's not a big deal.
I don't read AC A human right
...but even I think this is stupid.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
It might have worked then, but would it still be viable today? That's a reference well over half a century old.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
One thing that will come out of this is it will impact the ability of programs that capture TV shows and automatically edit out commercials based on different sound levels from the main show. Now that the whole darn thing is normalized how will it know when to edit them out?
Looks like a lot of people using programs that do this will have to get the ole video editor out to hand edit commercials until some other way is found to automatically detect and edit out commercials.
Natural scientists do this too sometimes - abstraction central. Ever hear of the physicist whose mind works in a frictionless vacuum, for instance? (obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/669/)
I did call out an econ professor one quarter on all the abstractions; his response was to the extent that they're necessary to make any progress in thinking about the problem, rather than get bogged down in detail calculations (one quote went along these lines was "I've seen everyone form freshman undergrads to PhD's have their research bog down because their project scope had too many details")
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That's only true if one considers the programs to be fungible. Personally, anyone who tries to tell me "If you don't like the loud commercials during Big Bang Theory, then go watch the Jersey shore instead. Those commercials are quiet" is not only missing the point, but deserves to be kicked in the groin.
No, the answer is not to go watch the Jersey shore instead (at least if you are referring to the TV show), the answer is, that if there is no TV show that does not play commercials unreasonably loud that you wish to watch, don't watch TV at all. However, in general, people do not stop watching TV because the commercials are too loud, they just put up with it and complain.
It does not matter if TV programs are fungible, if you find the ads on the programs you would like to watch to be objectionably (for whatever reason) don't watch the shows. Then contact your local station and tell them why you are no longer watching their shows. If one person does this, it will make little or no difference, if all of the people who have complained to their legislators about this had taken my suggested action instead, the problem would already be fixed, but you have to be willing to stop watching.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Wait.
There's someone out there NOT skipping commercials?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Product differentiation does interfere with a perfectly comeptitive market's concept of a uniform product, yes. (And congrats on the Big Bang Theory shoutout - that show is consistently hillarious, and I've purposely avoided the trashiness of "Jersey Shore")
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
As the price -- or perceived price -- of television rose from zero to something like fifty dollars a month in this age were everyone "has to" have cable or satellite, market penetration has fallen.
Say what you like about society or the declining quality of shows, but the fact is that as the price rose, demand fell.
Adam Smith is giggling.
This is measure of relative change which is kinda odd to enforce.
Well, look at it this way - you play the regular program at a lower level than you absolutely have to. Great, good sound range and all that, right? Well - people respond and 'levelize' their own TV by turning up the volume.
Then the commercial comes on and they turn it to the max. Before I shut my TV down, I was getting moments where the commercial was physically painful while I dived for the mute button on the remote.
When I was a kid I remember needing to be in the room watching the TV to hear the audio for the cartoon clearly. If there was a commercial on I could be in the bathroom and still hear it.
As for expensive equipment - I remember TVs from back in the '90s that boasted automatic commercial detection and volume control. I had a set of cassette player that would detect the rise in volume and chop it down(presumably to save my hearing) - only problem was that my headphones were quieter per watt than they assumed, so the level was uselessly quiet. The tech shouldn't be that expensive.
Just require the average level of programs and ads to be measured, and adjust the ad to match - quiet program, quiet ad. loud program, loud ad.
I don't read AC A human right
Smith is best seen as a leading economist of his time, and not some idealist visionary.
Depends who you talk to. I've known capitalist sycophants who think he was Jesus and Buddha all mushed together.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
"Many TVs have features that allow you to level out the sound from programming"
Have you tried using any of them? I have it on two of my TVs, and I even bought a device specifically for this. It doesn't work! At all! It might make some of the volume a little more quiet, but the overall effect is still Billy Mays screaming at the top of his lungs waking you up.
This will basically make that a thing of the past, thankfully.
20 minutes and a normalizing filter from the music shop, i can notice the difference now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Commercials? Am I saying that right? What is a "commercials"? My TV doesn't show me one of those.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Epic fail. Adam Smith understood quite well all the things you're discussing. In fact, his writings about free markets were crafted to encourage Europeans to adopt regulation schemes to wrest control of various goods from an existing monopolistic system.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
Ideally, he saw economics as characterized by small local economies interacting with each other and guided by the enlightened self-interest of individuals. This was a reaction against the practices of early transnational corporations (for example: the British East India Company and Muscovy Company), which were mostly unresponsive to local affairs and stewardship of resources. Though the argument is frequently, and incorrectly, used to justify free-trade policies, The Wealth of Nations was a rebuttal to the scale and effects of chartered monopoly.
I'm not sure what if anything is going to be accomplished.
Which is exactly the way it's supposed to be.
Chances are if only one party wants do to something it'll be bad for the plebs.
Of course, chances are if both parties want to do something it'll be even worse for the plebs...
The legislative branch has become increasingly reliant on the judicial branch to clean up their shit.
It would be better if they stopped passing insane laws for a while and stuck to nice "feel good" measures like the one mentioned in TFA.
and in AC/DC circuits the difference between ideal values and actual values can get folks killed
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Yeah. Ideally. I think I said that. He also overestimated the "enlightened" portion of the enlightened self-interest factor.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Talk about missing the point. Free market capitalism assumes people WOULD be "greedy, selfish, self-absorbed bastards only concerned with elevating themselves and fuck everybody else." and that's ok because the only way they can satisfy that greed and selfishnes is by providing something in return, at least in a society with the rule of law which is required for capitalism to work. The only alternative to let people act in their own self-interest is to force them physically to act in some other way, i.e the way someone else (those in power) think they should act, which not only deprives them of liberty (see gulags) but also tends to produce economic disasters (see famines in almost all socialist economies).
Obligatory note for idiots who think that what I'm talking about is not socialism but communism: Socialism is an economic system in which the government owns the means of production. It has only ever been implemented in communist countries.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
This entire discussion forgets that neither commercials nor content is the product. YOUR EYEBALLS are the product, which the "content providers" SELL TO the advertisers. They are NOT in the business of bringing you anything; they're in the business of harvesting and selling your attention.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Actually, that's exactly what he assumes. The free market (usually) works precisely because people are greedy, selfish, self-absorbed bastards only concerned with elevating themselves and f*ck everybody else. It just so happens that in most cases, having individuals act that way results in the best possible outcome not just for the individual for everyone overall, so long as everyone is acting that way.
Where the free market fails is in a subset of cases where this isn't true - where individuals acting in their own best interests doesn't result in the best possible outcome for the whole. Cases like the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons. Like most things in life, there are times when free market philosophy works, and times when it doesn't. Too many people see a few successes and assume it always works, or see a few failures and assume it never works. The more discerning individual will try to distinguish between the cases where it does and doesn't work, so as to better predict such cases in the future. That way you can regulate the cases where it doesn't work to avoid it being exploited, while leaving cases where it does work regulation-free to derive the full benefit from it.
because people would go to a source without that commercial or without any commercials at all
They can: they can pay for channels without commercials. Oh, you expect free market to provide magic option as well: people who spend their own money to make television programs without any source of income at all?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Government regulation was the only way to combat this.
Yeah, but this is a case of BAD regulation. Yes, it solves a problem that many people want solved, but it does so in the wrong way.
The better solution is that all commercials be broadcast with sidechannel metadata that identifies the type of content and the sender. Any content that is subject to truth-in-advertising free speech restrictions should be properly tagged so we know it is an advertisement. This would also let us loosen the free-speech restrictions that are in place.
This method lets the consumers DECIDE how they want to deal with commercials. Previously, the broadcasters had the choice. Now nobody does.
Why would you think that? Even in a libertarian utopia you wouldn't always get what you want -- you get what the market can provide. You can express preferences; but in the end, TV would have loud ads because people value the programming more than they hate the loud ads.
As for copyrights and patents, without them, the current television model gets harder to envision, so it's hard to make a direct comparison. But given that copyrights exist, you would expect that commercial-free sources of original programming would start to appear, offering network-like television on a premium basis, and other alternate media sources offering additional options on the internet, as well as home devices designed to circumvent the ads themselves.
There's a part of me that is pissed off at politicians for wasting time with this crap, but a much larger part that is happy they are doing this instead of fucking up more important things with unnecessary regulation.
Political ads will be exempt as 'free speech', right?
Adam Smith believed that government regulations were absolutely vital to the functioning of a free market, that government should grant copyrights and patents, enforce contract law, build roads and infrastructure, ....Adam Smith WAS NOT a libertarian.
Your conclusion does not follow from what you said before it. All libertarians don't agree on everything but in general most will agree that the government should grant copyrights and patents, enforce contract law (and laws in general) and more or less build roads and infrastructure (where it is impossible or hopelessly impractical for private sector to do the same). Those things are a tiny fraction of what the government does though. Adam Smith wouldn't like any of the entitlements (70%) of the budget, he wouldn't like the myriad of inane legislation such as regulating the sound of commercials, he wouldn't like the US tax code (all 6 million words of it) one bit, he wouldn't approve of ridiculous amount of health and safety and other business regulations lobbied for by the big businesses in order to present an artificial barrier to entry for small businesses, he would abolish the FDA, and he wouldn't nationalize the health care or regulate the Internet. So, no, Adam Smith would not support everything the government is doing in the economic sphere.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Wow, I can't remember the last time I watched much of anything live on television. The price I pay for commercial free television is that I wait until it's over before starting the TiVo. Even my parents don't watch commercials anymore, they flip through the rest of the channels until their show is back on. It amazes me that companies still pay the price for commercial spots. They must still work, but it's hard to imagine. It's also hard to imagine that 1/2 hour show is shorter than 20 minutes long. When will businesses learn that when they make their practices onerous, people find a way around. Too many commercials leads to TiVo. Too high a price for music leads to bittorrent. And so on.
Oh well.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
and this is what the government is worried about. WTF? Congress can't pass an important piece of legislature to save itself, but hey now we won't have to press the 'mute' button anymore during commercials?! Does anyone watch commericals let alone listen to them?
Google's video ads are the bane of my TV watching experience - no I don't want a magicjack, especially if you shout at me and my whole house! I have complained often to Dish Network (who uses Google to sell ads) and Google, but no actual results. Once they stop that crap (or I get to join the class action), about the only complaint I will have is not having HD ads and not somehow fitting the ad as an overlay for CNBC (a bit excessive as a wish). Google Ads are cool an democratizing though so hopefully they fix it. How else would you get to see so many gun ads and strange internet upstarts.
Your title doesn't follow from your body text.
Please, when you claim to know what Adam Smith would or wouldn't like, back it up with a quote from him, okay? Otherwise, you are just making shit up. You are flat out WRONG about him, and I KNOW you have not read Wealth of Nations. If you had, and you had understood and remembered any of it, you wouldn't be making the claims you are.
Let me pass on some choice quotes for your edification.
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
-Book I, Chapter VI, pg.60
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
-Book I, Chapter VIII, pg.80
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.
-Book I, Chapter VIII, pg.94
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
-Book I, Chapter IX, pg.117
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workman,its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.
-Book I, Chapter x, Part II, pg.168
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.
-Book I, Chapter XI, Part II, pg.202
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
-Book V, Chapter I, Part II, pg.770
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
-Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article I, pg.786
The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more then that of people of some rank and fortune.
-Book V, Chapter I, Part III, pg.845
For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
-Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II, p.847
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.
-Book V, Chapter II, Part II, pg.892
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
-Book V, Chapter II, Part II, Article I, pg.911
Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.
-Book V, Chapter II, Part II, pg.927
Wow. Looks like the real Adam Smith disagrees with your imaginary Adam Smith in a great many particulars.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You want to watch The Office on NBC.com? Well, you have to sit through a particular commercial. You can't switch to another better, quieter, more appealing commercial.
My observation is that no matter how many times they force me to sit through Stay Free Maxipads or Midol ads, the probability my buying these products does not increase at all from it's base value of zero. It would be in the advertisers best interest to let me choose commercials for products I actually have some interest in, which can be done on the 'net. I tend to shy away from products and women that appear to be trying too hard to sell themselves... if there were any real value there, they could afford to be subtle.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I've got your TechKnob right here!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In that case, it's just the consumer who's getting screwed over by this legislation, then.
And if that society has both broken capitalism and rule of law, what then? You get what we have now. Merry Christmas.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Hmm, There is a 9 year war going on, Were trillions in debt and the economy is in the toliet,
but congress has time to make sure my TV audio is not to loud..
Does this apply to websites that show commercials on the internet because they are getting absolutely horrible
You failed to understand who the broadcaster's customers REALLY are: THE ADVERTISERS! Of COURSE the advertisers ads were impossible to miss.
Then there's the American way to fail, deregulate systems that work so they can be exploited and regulate systems that don't work so they can be exploited more. Smith was an optimist.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
of the commons known as commercial broadcasting. That's the entire basis of the FCC.
Best Slashdot Co
ALL tv stations show loud commercials. or, 90% of stations show loud commercials. it becomes de facto reality of the market, and all stations start showing them. just like how it happens with all 'industry standard practices' in all sectors all the time.
what are you going to do ?
Read radical news here
IIRC, wasn't average volume level how some DVRs were able to auto-skip commercials?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Which is what netflix changes. You are the customer, the shows are the product. This is the same approach HBO took at one time, they might still I have not had cable in a long time.
I've noticed that nobody has addressed the fact that TV viewers are not customers of the TV networks they watch. Instead, a TV viewer is a product that the network sells to advertisers. The TV shows are not products, but bait.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
You are aware, of course, that this is just a slippery slope argument?
*Just* a slippery slope argument?
Are you aware that as the slippery slope is a kind of path of least resistance, if one of the stronger arguments to make if the effects are negative because it's pointing out a problem that is likely to actually occur.
Oh, probably not the president thing. But when you create a framework dictating content, it's very easy indeed to adorn that with whatever restrictions come along later that might seem harmless by themselves, but tend to snowball. Regulations exist because regulators make them, but the regulators do not go away when the regulation is done... they sit, thinking of new ways to enhance said regulations, with the voices of lobbyists closest to hand as to what to add. It's kind of what they do.
Basically I don't care because I abandoned the world of broadcast TV some time ago, but I'm pretty sure the same people crying out in favor of these regulations will be crying foul at the way they are used later, and they should remember they are the cause of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
commercials will be using crappier audio.
Yes, but...
their 'valleys' will always be narrower since they try to cram the most 'density' in that they can.
That's what the regulation forbids. That's a lot of what makes them seem louder in the first place - if the regulation isn't banning this then it's not doing anything.
I just am not sure the automatic detection will be nearly as reliable after this.
Although one thing I've noticed in OTA HD feeds is that commercials mostly drop to a lower resolution, perhaps it's all the time and you can just trigger on that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Commercials are a self-imposed hell full of idiots afflicted by demons of their own imagining. I call them "demon-ridden" the same way I'd call a dog with a flea problem "flea-ridden".
I write sci-fi for metalheads
In general commercials are not louder than program content, although often times they are noisier. Some commercials seem louder because the audio is more compressed and maintain more consistent levels where as program content has much wider range with many lulls in the audio. Also, when your program gets loud you tend to be more psychologically receptive to it compared to commercials which are generally unwelcome no matter how loud they are. In those cases where a commercial really is too loud it's almost always a mistake. These mistakes have become somewhat more prevalent in recent years due to more prevalent file based delivery where ingest operators have little to no control over audio levels when commercial files get loaded on to the playout server. Still, it's largely a non-existent problem. Government regulation will only cause a huge waste of time and money to correct minor fluctuations in audio levels and potentially decrease audio quality due to excess sound processing.
They should have spent their energy getting rid of the FCC insteading dictating the volume of speach.
Yep... until 3rd party advertising enters the picture.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Which is when I cancel the subscription.
Of course you have a choice: download/pirate or watch on a PVR. Anyone watching a raw TV feed nowadays is not keeping up with the technology.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
While what you said is technically correct, it misses the mark. The difference between ideal values and actual values in *anything*, from software to circuitry to chemical compound use rates to nuclear decay rates, can result in getting folks killed.
There is a lot of talk here of free markets and such, but a very big fact is being left out here.
They are using a commons and are obligated to use it courteously and in the public interest. They're not shouting in their private stores, they're shouting in the public library and the librarian has every right to tell them to whisper or leave.
Put in simple terms, if they're just going to jam the airwaves with Billy Mays shouting at us from beyond the grave, why shouldn't we tell them to just shut up so we can have a few more useful WiFi channels?
The cable companies are no exception. They run their cables through a public right of way. The public (as a whole) is not in any way obligated to allow that.
The public has every right to tell them just how polite they must be and how much time they may spend on commercials, it's our spectrum and right of ways that we allow them to use.