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US Bans Loud Commercials
bs0d3 writes "On Tuesday, the FCC passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. It's a law that states all commercials must run at the same volume as network newscasts. The same applies to network promos. The responsibility falls on cable providers like Comcast or charter. The law will not take effect until next year which leaves it plenty of time to be challenged in court by cable providers or advertisers."
Great. If only it was 20 years ago and the Internet didn't exist.
there's standards for loudness in most countries, but they're completely ignored by the broadcasters. they take an ad that's the correct standard volume and go ahead and turn it up anyway.
Now, if they'll also ban quiet and medium-loud ones, we'll really be getting somewhere.
The problem with ads is that they, like top 40 music, are much more heavily compressed than movies or newstalk. The maximum amplitude isn't any higher though. So what measure of "loudness" is it going to be? Because if it's amplitude, then this law will do precisely nothing.
Here is a link to the FCC website for the actual text of the Report and Order regarding implementation of the CALM Act.
They'll just raise the volume of their newscasts to be above the normal level of the rest of the channel.
Who watches ads anymore anyways?
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$tar -xvf
THIS LAW SHOULD HAVE BEEN PASSED AGES AGO.
obligatory lower case text to get past /.'s ban on too-loud posts.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's about time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
*kaboom*HEADON ...*whisper*apply directly to the forehead.
Too late when they've blown your speakers or woke your neighbors up.
Check your premises.
Because sometimes, especially while listening to a quiet movie, you PREFER NOT TO BE SUDDENLY BLASTED WITH NOISE!!
It's annoying as hell. I do kind of agree with you though that it doesn't seem like something the government needs to regulate. But, hey, at least it isn't something actually evil (*ahem* SOPA). And yes, it's a bit sad that I'm glad just because something the government does isn't completely wrong.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
So your solution is instead of one person submitting a reasonable volume on their ad millions should have to hit mute or change channels? How about we just don't submit loud ads that a large majority don't want anyway. Sounds like a decent regulation to me. Surprised it was ever allowed in the first place.
Because by the time you mute, it's too late.
Change channels? I'm busy peeing.
This is a good thing, but people like you are deluded.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We need the "Caps Lock Annhilation Program" to stop loud posters.
Well, you're welcome to it, but *I* certainly don't need the CLAP.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Catching up with the rest of the world, one day at a time. Partly.
Now how am I going to skip commercials? Doesn't TiVo use the volume difference to determine where the commercials begin and end?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
How many bureaucrats does it take to run a shell script?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
uh, you do know that everything to do with broadcasting is regulated through the FCC and basically always has been, right?
In an ideal world they'd have threatened revocation of broadcasting licenses due to the safety and equipment longevity problems caused by the overly loud commercials, and that would have gotten the industry to fix it real fast.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Because sometimes, especially while listening to a quiet movie, you PREFER NOT TO BE SUDDENLY BLASTED WITH NOISE!!
I agree. But you know what? There's a technical solution for that, and TVs these days come with settings that prevent that from happening.
It's annoying as hell. I do kind of agree with you though that it doesn't seem like something the government needs to regulate. But, hey, at least it isn't something actually evil (*ahem* SOPA).
From our perspective, because we agree with what they're trying to accomplish. I don't agree with the means, though, which makes it very bad legislation. If we let the government get involved in trivial stuff that is beneficial for us, we're giving them the precedent to get involved in all sorts of trivial things in our daily lives. That's something I like to avoid.
"Fuck this shit, I will just go download it and not have any ads at all". And they wonder why people download TV show?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Sounds good, but how do you define "volume?" Peak decibels? RMS power of the signal? Average volume? Can I insert a few seconds of silence at the end to balance out a huge burst of noise at the beginning? Does frequency matter? Instead of using more volume, can I just shift my commercial up an octave to get around the restriction?
The FCC is implementing a law passed by Congress. The FCC did not "pass" anything.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Sirius has become as bad as broadcast radio in adopting the same sh_tty BOOM, WHOOSH & BAM intros to commercials. Who, besides 5 year-olds is impressed with this junk, anyway? I listen to a radio show and then BOOOM <sunday sunday sunday-guy voice>You're listening to ___ on Sirius __(channel name)__</sunday sunday sunday-guy voice> It would be great of FCC insists those stupid things were toned down as well.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fucking. Hate. Forced. Acronyms.
Advertisers view laws, rules, and common decency as damage and will do their best to route around it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Agencies can pass acts now? CALM was passed by Congress (last I checked the legislature in the United States) back in 2008 and the FCC has adopted rules called for by the act after a period of public comment.
ahem. I said, U.S. BANS LOUD COMMERCIALS!
hope you heard me.
Because sometimes, especially while listening to a quiet movie, you PREFER NOT TO BE SUDDENLY BLASTED WITH NOISE!!
It's annoying as hell. I do kind of agree with you though that it doesn't seem like something the government needs to regulate. But, hey, at least it isn't something actually evil (*ahem* SOPA). And yes, it's a bit sad that I'm glad just because something the government does isn't completely wrong.
What's so amazing about this is I have a MAD Magazine reprint parodying thise from about 1960 - Someone's watching a late night feature and can hardly hear the sound 'ah help your killing me. aaagh.' suddenly, TICK TOCK TICK TOCK ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE GETTING TO SLEEP!! and neighbors all yelling out their windows to turn the noise down. Wow. About 51 years since that bit in the magazine. Glaciers move faster.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wrong. Congress passed the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act and it was signed by the President on December 15, 2010, a year ago tomorrow.
What the FCC did yesterday was to adopt rules restricting loud commercials, as it was required to under the CALM Act, which will become effective one year after adoption, on December 13, 2012.
The rule is based on ATSC A/85 RP (70 page PDF), which most definitely is not just a simple amplitude definition.
Because if I have to mute or change the channel at every commercial:
1) It's highly obnoxious
2) I'm likely to miss parts of what I was trying to watch
3) It defeats the purpose of advertising
It's not like they're spending a trillion dollars to do this. It's just a nice simple curb on the advertisers' bad behavior. I know some people think the government should be basically comatose, and complain whenever they do anything. But most of us like when our representatives represent us.
Does this mean that the Adnix module by S.R Hadden no longer will work?
"Bees!" - Eddie Izzard
Nitpick:
The FCC can't pass laws or "acts" (which aren't "passed" anyway). Only Congress can pass bills which become laws when signed by the President (or via a veto override). The FCC has regulatory power over broadcast networks based on the mandates given to it by Congress, and has the power to levy fines, but it can't enact laws. There's a grey area when it comes to non-broadcast stations and cable companies, but usually they comply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission#Regulatory_powers_and_enforcement
I'm assuming that's why the government acted so late - they were hoping for a free market solution to the problem. Because really, it's silly that the government needs to do something that industry really can do itself. All the government has to do is normally just make whinings about it, and industry goes and does it pre-emptively to prevent regulation.
In this case, no one cared enough at the stations to actually do it, the government gave up waiting for the free market to do something that's generating tons of complaints, and acted on it.
Speaking of which, here in Canada, it seems the History Channel (Canada) is deliberately doing it. The ads are always MUCH louder than the show. The show's at normal volume with rest of channels I watch (except Discovery has seemed to gone DOWN in volume...), but when it switches to ads, the volume jumps sharply. It goes soft during programming again.
And no, I'm not always watching the show, I just know when the commercials are on because they really are louder.
but some of us have tickets for Rigoletto.
Uhhh...this is stupid.
So now, the newscasts will simply be much louder then all the other content.
Hey, what's that over there!?
What about banning those annoying-as-fuck translucent station IDs, especially the animated ones?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Wasn't this passed like a year ago? I've been waiting for effect to take place since then.
All you naysayers: Try watching any movie on FX on a not-so-new box.
Amen.
The loudness of commercials is one of the reasons I now deliberately don't watch them. And found my life measurably better because of it.
Now I download the shows, and I don't even have to hit "mute" every time they come on. If they didn't have adverts at all, I'd be more likely to watch them on the TV at the time they are broadcast (or at least PVR them)
Commercials in surround sound are just as annoying as loud commercials.
They'll intentionally bounce the sound around all over the 5.1/7.1 channels so you can't ignore it.
Regulations always end up with the most evil effect possible, as it forces people to be devious to work around them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since this is Slashdot, I'll share some details on the problem of measuring loudness.
Loudness is difficult to measure objectively, because loudness is what a human experiences when listening to audio. Intensity, on the other hand, is easy to measure; just get a sound level meter.
Why is loudness different than intensity? Because the human auditory system contains a natural filterbank that divides incoming audio up into multiple bands, and then applies an exponential scaling function to each band. Old books and papers call these bands critical bands; I think the more modern concept is ERBs.
For sounds that hit only one band, such as a pure sine tone, the intensity of the sound is a good approximation of loudness. But sounds that hit multiple bands scale roughly linearly in the number of bands hit. I'll give an example.
If you generate a pure sine tone at power level X, and then generate two sine tones each at power level X/2, then the measured intensity will be identical. However, if the two sine tones are in different bands, the loudness will be nearly double.
So, as a rule of thumb, the more frequency bands a given sound hits, the louder it is at any given power level. Something that sounds like white noise will be louder than something that sounds like a clear bell tone or a single flute note.
The people who make commercials know how to game the system. I'm pretty sure that there were already limits on measured intensity of commercials, but that wasn't enough to solve the problem.
Imagine you are driving along, listening to a radio show. Maybe talk radio, maybe NPR, whatever. You have the "volume control" knob on your car radio set to a comfortable listening level. The radio show only has audio at typical human speech frequencies, and isn't trying to sound loud. Now comes the commercial, which smears its audio all over the spectrum; it puts processing on the voice, with reverb and stuff. "Sunday Sunday Sunday-y-y-y!!!! M-m-monster truck demolition derby!!!" or whatever. It's not your imagination, it really is louder. But a sound level meter might say it's the same as the radio show content, or only slightly higher intensity level.
The company for which I work (DTS) has a solution to the problem called "Neural Loudness Control", and there is a white paper available that really goes into detail about this stuff, so you don't need to stop with my lame explanation. NLC has a full "loudness model" that approximates the human auditory system when computing a loudness metric; but it also can operate in a mode that follows the new standard.
Also, here's a PowerPoint presentation by JJ Johnston about loudness vs. intensity.
So the new standard, 1770, is a pretty easy-to-calculate approximation of loudness. You apply two filters: one that simulates the transfer function of an average human head, and the "RLB weighting curve"; then compute mean-square energy on the result. This is simple enough that nobody really has an excuse in the 21st Century that it would be hard to comply.
I'm a little worried that it is too simple, and there might be ways to trick it. For example, it doesn't seem to handle audio that is smeared across multiple bands to make it sound louder. But I'm not actually working in the area of loudness measurement, and from what I've heard, 1770 works okay for most stuff. It's better than no standard.
And on the gripping hand, 1770 is the law now.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
that does not have any ad's (under then HBO own ad's) and cable does not do insertion on all channels
Why should I?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
they already have people that have been doing this for analog networks, because loudness caused problems with overmodulation and interfering with other radio bands.
this just means a few of those folks will get to keep their jobs, so long as they re-train a little bit.
ie not as wasteful as you might think, and actually of benefit to the general public.
ha! go ahead and give me a slippery slope argument for this situation. i dare you!
nobody submits an out-of-spec ad. it's the networks that turn them up, not the ad makers.
From our perspective, because we agree with what they're trying to accomplish. I don't agree with the means, though, which makes it very bad legislation.
Just because YOU do not agree with the means does not make it bad legislation.
We have government for precisely this reason, to restore some semblance of a balance of power between the individual consumer and the corporate giants who feel free to subject you to anything they think they can make you swallow. They are using our airwaves, and our TV sets, to say nothing about our eyeballs, they should follow our rules.
Your position seems to be you always have the right to turn it off, and any abuse you get is of your own choice. I'm not willing to make that choice. Why should I? What kind of freedom is that? The choice to take it or leave it? Screw that. They can operate by our rules, or operate not at all. Let them take it or leave it for a while. They've had their way for 30 years.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Mod parent down because it isn't a nitpick. It's the EXACT truth.
Props to mkraft for pointing this out though. Captcha: hubris
Of the businesses being forced to change their practices due to (any) new regulations, how many of them are poor and struggling, and how many of them are a half-step removed from being a monopoly?
When will website ads be forced to contain the same contrast ratio's as the rest of the website? Electric green on black, flashing an inverted palette, is visually louder than the main content!
Making the ads louder draws attention to them. It works, and advertisers will keep doing anything that works. Even if it just draws enough attention for people to mute it, they still notice the ad. Any attention is good attention for them. I've noticed this happening on Hulu (just enough to notice and be mildly irritating), since I don't actually watch TV anymore. Of course, Hulu's ads aren't interesting to me anyways (really, a 21-year-old single guy isn't going to be interested in Pediasure, TYVM), which is a failing on their part.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This was a law passed by congress; the enforcement of that law is assigned to somebody, most likely the FCC. FCC may only be for management of the people's limited radio waves it still has been assigned multiple tasks by law and sometimes it oversteps and sometimes it pushes around cable as well.
This is why I oppose the FCC doing net neutrality, because they lack the necessary power to pull it off and if they do, they are weak and can easily be undone with some presidential appointments. LAWS are not so easy to undo once passed which is why we need a law passed.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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We have government for precisely this reason, to restore some semblance of a balance of power between the individual consumer and the corporate giants who feel free to subject you to anything they think they can make you swallow.
Well, kind of. I think we have government because we all agree pure anarchy is bad. We have the government we do to protect the Rights of the People from being trampled. Hmmm ... how's that workin' out? Not as well as we'd like, in my opinion, but then again I'm a minority when all by myself.
Anyhow, my real point is it's silly to think "Government" as it exists is there to restore power to us instead of corporate giants. It sure seems to go the other way most of the time.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
The flight toward other entertainment channels is already in full swing. TV ownership is declining. People are dropping cable. More males play videogames than watch sports now. The baby boomers, the quintessential TV generation, have begun going on to their reward. Even basic media consumption habits (time-shifting, etc) have changed for good. TV still has more time left than newspapers do, but not much.
So turning down the volume of commercials now is a bit like repainting the ballroom after the ship has already hit the iceberg.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I watch a lot of British TV shows, mostly from the BBC. They pay a tax to access the BBC there I believe, and in return they get no advertising. As a result most British shows are better written, better paced and better produced I think, in part because the program has that much extra time to evolve the story in. :P
Of course, their series are generally pitifully short for a season (say 6-10 episodes in Britain per season, versus 22 in North America).
I think that if a big channel were to show its programs WITHOUT any commericals, they might be able to make more money in the end. Of course, I would have to be able to subscribe just to that channel through my cable company and that is never gonna happen. They are too busy matching up crap channels with the 1 or 2 decent ones in a tiering system that ensures I have to spend $100/mo to get all the stuff I want.
Thus I am killing my cable shortly. I generally run without cable at all for most of the year then sometimes break down and get it hooked up for a few months before realizing that "yes its still pretty much all shit, all the time" and cut it again. There are probably good shows on TV channels that I am not willing to spend an extra $40 to see, but I will never know it because the channels that I do have access too are all full of fucking crap like Survivor, XFactor etc - shit for the mindless masses.
If I download, I get what I want when I want it and without interruptions. If I like a series, I buy the season as a set and watch it off disks. I own a lot of complete TV series because of that. I now watch a lot of stuff on Netflix mind you, so thats changing too
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
FINALLY, the federal government does something useful.
Two news anchors sitting at the news desk, one male one female, smiling in a news anchor kind of way cameras running:
--------------
Male Anchor yelling at the top of his lungs: So Jane, what do you think about our new theme music on the intro?
Female Anchor yelling back: Whaaat?
Male Anchor yelling louder: I said, what * do * you * think * of * our * new * theme * music? It's * by * Motorhead!
Female Anchor nods as if she heard him but really she didn't, starts yelling herself: It sure is Bob. In our first story...
--------------
They'll find a way around this.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hope they will pass a similar law for movies so one could hear the actors without getting deaf from the sound effects and soundtrack.
Most people don't want ads, eh? I disagree, and I believe that the proof is in the relatively low number of people willing to directly pay for media rather than allow media to be paid for by advertising. Simply put, less people are willing to pay for HBO than are willing to watch ads on network stations.
Personally, I don't mind ads all that much. Ad-supported media is an all-around winning proposition: producers are rewarded for creating content people want to watch, consumers are provided content at substantially lower direct cost, and advertisers get the opportunity to make their pitches to a strongly self-selected audience (which provides better demographic, economic and geographic targeting than more generalized advertising, such as billboards). For anyone mature enough to understand that creating good content is a labor and capital intensive process, it's hard to imagine a more equitable system for supporting "free" content.
That said, I fully support the aims of this regulation and sincerely hope that it has precisely the desired effect. The fact I do not begrudge content producers/distributors and advertisers their ability to make money is not the same as believing it is acceptable for them to abuse the arrangement. If advertisers want me to pay attention to their ads, they should make them more interesting, not more loud.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Why would the networks do that? What is their incentive to make the ads louder if the advertisers are not, in some way, coercing them to do so? If I'm NBC, I won't crank up the volume on a Coca-Cola ad just because I can, because doing so is a waste of my time and resources, especially since I know full well viewers don't like it and may decide to watch another program if I do so. Assuming at least moderate competence for everyone involved, your explanation simply doesn't make sense: you're claiming that the only party with any incentive whatsoever to do something is not responsible for doing so, while another party that has natural incentive to do the opposite is doing it instead. That's just crazy talk.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
We sound mixers have been waiting for something like this to happen forever. At last there is a reasonably well made standard of measuring loudness, and it's based on plenty of testing and tuning. That's the ITU-R BS.1770 standard.
In a sense, it's like Replaygain for all those audio players like Foobar2000, and Sound Check for ITunes.
It's loudness normalization. In fact, the Replaygain scanner in Foobar2000 now uses the EBU R128 recommendation which is based on ITU-R BS.1770 standard.
For more information check out this introduction to loudness normalization by Florian Camerer, chairman of the PLOUD group of the EBU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuEtQqC-Sqo
And yeah, I'm a professional re-recording mixer and sound editor. I love this stuff, since it rewards good sound and punishes crappy, overcompressed stuff.
Are they talking about relative average loudness compared with the programming material around it or is it some absolute value?
It's the difference in average loudness from the program you're watching, and the tone and volubility of the ad, which is the most annoying.
It all depends on how the bill is written. Volume is not the same as loudness. If you take the commercial/whatever and use audio compression and processing gear (or software) you can crunch the crap out of the commercial, do a little frequency shaping, etc. and it will -sound- a lot louder than less processed audio. Yet, you can show using VU meters, peak meters, and similar 'volume measuring' devices and they will show the program and commercial audio as being about the same. The levels (amplitude) peak and otherwise will not exceed a particular value yet the heavily processed commercial can still sound like it's blasting you. It's all in the processing/shaping/limiting etc. And, of course, how the bill specifies that the 'volume' be measured or determined.
better late than never hey fellas ?
I'm sure this will just lead to another fee they tack on to our bills.
Volume Stabilization Fee - $10
In an ongoing effort to improve our service, the FCC has authorized us to charge an additional $10/mo so we can increase the volume of your programming to match the high definition quality of the commercials we provide. (You know, the ones that keep your monthly bills so low.)
How are service providers responsible? they have almost no control over the content delivered over the content that networks deliver. its ridiculous on the level of making The Department of Transportation responsible for noisy cars on the highway.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
I came here to blindly say something about "the same volume as network newscasts" where the stations could run their non-newscast programmes at a lower volume while keeping the commercial volume at newscast volume... Then I RTFA. It's "the same average volume as the programs they accompany". Not just the news. I thought that was already the law?
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Oh dear looks like I invoked Poe's law again...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There already was a standard requiring commercials to limit loudness. A commercial could not be louder than the program it was accompanying, which meant it could not be louder than the loudest point in the programming. What that meant is if there was a single gunshot in an hour, your commercials in that hour could be very, very loud. Also, loudness was not weighted. High-pitched ringing and speaking at the same level were considered equally loud, even though human hearing is skewed (A-weighting) to perceive speech as inherently louder.
So what this really does is 1) re-define what constitutes "loud", and 2) give the process some teeth.
Not really. It keys on the average volume of a commercial needing to be the average volume of the show. We don't want averages, we want ReplayGain.
Averages can be gamed quite trivially. Think of a thirty second ad in which the first 25 seconds contain very soft speaking with bits of silence between lines. The CALM Act affords the rest of the ad the luxury of BLASTING the product's tag line at well over the current maximum volume level.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
In this case, no one cared enough at the stations to actually do it, the government gave up waiting for the free market to do something that's generating tons of complaints, and acted on it.
Except lots of TV's and amps come with a compressor/limiter built in. You can buy a box for $25 that will do it for other gear. I've got one for PulseAudio that I'm just waiting for upstream to accept some patches for.
Free market solutions are available. In fact, the government is likely to put some of them out of business with their new rules.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We have government for precisely this reason, to restore some semblance of a balance of power between the individual consumer and the corporate giants who feel free to subject you to anything they think they can make you swallow.
Um, no, that's not in the US Constitution.
Neither are megalocorps, of course.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think we have government because we all agree pure anarchy is bad.
What does 'pure anarchy' mean anyway? Serious question.
Most people haven't looked seriously into the work done in the past 50 years on stateless societies. Some experiments like Somalia show that the fall of the State leads to improved economic conditions (compared to its neighbors, not teh whole world). Dubai implemented private law when they designed their new society.
Anyway, State-form governments killed half a billion people in the 20th Century between wars and democide, so stateless societies have to at least be that bad before they're dismissed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Terry O'Reilly has a radio show on the CBC called "The Age of Persuasion", and it deals with the history of advertising. It's actually a lot more interesting than you might think, but I digress.
He's been doing commercials forever, and he swears that you can't set the volume in an ad. Here's one example.
That said, I fully support the aims of this regulation and sincerely hope that it has precisely the desired effect.
When has this kind of regulation ever had "the desired effect"? Mostly all it will do is force ad creation agencies to find new ways to get around the current measure of "loudness" or find some other annoying way to attract attention to their ads.
Just like the wonderful "do not call" list stopped telemarketers. No, all it did was force them to find ways of spoofing caller ID data so it was harder to report them to the FTC when their "this is your last opportunity to avoid higher interest rates, we won't call you again..." barrage hits. I actually got a call from Robert F. Kennedy last week. Fascinating. Don't know what he was selling since he didn't leave a message, and for the same reason I have no way of reporting the violator.
How many bureaucrats does it take to run a shell script?
To the bureaucrat, a shell script is a guideline given by the constituency, made to ignore. It's just a shell anyway.
And bash is something you do to your opponent.
tckl is what you do to the publics ears.
and fsck the public!
Should the legal system really be messing with things like this? Sure, it is annoying, but I don't think that laws should be created because some dude doesn't feel like turning his volume down during commercials. Laws should only maintain peace, if anything, and I don't think that this issue is causing many deaths.
Well not ditch, replace them with network newreports, and run the "network newscast" for 0.0001 seconds at 3:03am *really* loud. If it doesn't need to be daily sync it up with the emergency broadcast test...
Constitution?
Government predates the constitution by several centuries.
The reason mankind create governments around the world is to level the playing field, so that bandits (corporate or otherwise) do not rule the common man. (A failing of government has allowed these bandits refuge within government itself from time to time).
There are other reasons, such as build infrastructure, and protecting the populace. But by and large governments as an institution was designed to limit the "might makes right" mentality, you know, like establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, that kind of thing.
Don't confuse the Method of government with the Reason for government. The reason was put in the first paragraph of one famous document, so that you wouldn't miss it. But it seems this plan failed, and miss it you did.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
THIS !!
"It's a law that states all commercials must run at the same volume as network newscasts."
Wait a second. I seems they've installed a rather obvious loophole.
MORE NEWS AT 11!
[Actually it looks like the law sets the volume according to the "program the commercial accompanies", so it isn't as silly as the summary suggests]
I see what you're going for, but you seem to have exagerated a bit. The average of 1,1,1,1,50 is 10.8.
The CALM Act was passed by Congress. It is a law requiring that the FCC write, publish, and enforce regulations. It also specifies a deadline.
The FCC has issued a Report and Order which specifies new or changed rules (regulations).
Both processes are painful to watch, a bit like watching sausage being made.
It seems like the commercials in online shows are almost triple loud, sometimes enough to make my speakers distort.
One of the many reasons I cannot stand commercial (and some public) TV media in the US is the visual loudness. Flashing images. Strobe-like effects. A stream of image overload, most of it violent, nonsensical, and suggestive.
Nice that the regulators took a swipe at audio compression. Next challenge: video loudness.
As for "content" let the message of those who tune out be known.
Um...
The reason mankind create governments around the world is to level the playing field...But by and large governments as an institution was designed to limit the "might makes right" mentality.
Well, that's not exactly right. Government isn't about limiting "might makes right," as much as it is about pooling resources so that you're part of the group that has might. So in a society with no government, if I'm stronger than you, I can just go to your house and take your stuff. What are you going to do about it? What government does is get a bunch of people who are not built to fight, but are tired of getting bullied around, to all get together and agree that everyone should have property rights (for example). So you pool a bunch of people together who believe in this, fund a police force to enforce your rules, and the next time I show up to steal something from you because I'm stronger than you, a bunch of people show up with guns who are stronger than me. Might still makes right, but now the might is on your side.
That's why I disagree with large scale legislation at the federal level, like this one, even when I happen to agree with what it's doing. At the local level, maybe everyone really is of one mind on the subject, so it's alright to enforce things like that. At the national level, some days they're bullying on my side, but other days they're bullying against me. For everything that I happen to agree with, there's going to be 20 other things the government is going to be using its might to force me to do or not do. And the federal guys are far too strong for the local guys to fight back, so you actually tipped the scales too far...I don't even have the option to pool resources to level the playing field, as you say, because of the resources the federal government pooled across the other 49 states (and maybe half of my own state).
Federal government and federal laws are fine, but we really should keep it limited to the big stuff where there's 99% consensus on. Everything else should be at the local level. if I don't like it, I can move to the next county where people agree with me and the laws are different.
And yes, pipe dream, not how it works or ever will work.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
So, anarchy it is then. Criminal law is just regulations for individuals.
That is party correct. And indeed, we can see just where that goes wrong too. Or are you truly for the war on drugs? SOPA?
Regulations (as opposed to law) are generally not about things that most people agree are wrong. They are about channeling people like cattle, through a path so hard to take that none who are on the other side may pass.
So if you enjoy huge corporations getting huger with no danger of challenge from below, if you enjoy the war on drugs and criminalization of people who have done nothing truly wrong, if you enjoy destroying the fabric of the internet through SOPA - then by all means continue to tout how awesome regulations are for everyone.
After all, you happily give us all a scapegoat to hold up and say "here, this is the man who destroyed us all".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Awesome, and only seven years since I last owned a TV and noticed that behavior. Ah, piratebay, let me count the ways..
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Advertisers in Canada don't give a damn and until there is a financial penalty, will not comply.
Or is it that we keep watching American stations.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I gave up my cable subscription a few years ago. This was a great decision since I could find all the shows I watched online. However, the commercials online are 10 times louder than those on TV. I suggest this be applied to all forms of media, as it is rather annoying.
I'm only 26, so I don't know how long overdue this is, but I can't seem to remember a time when commercials weren't twice as loud as the show. Can someone fill me in?
Normalize is junk and it doesn't do what you think it does. What you need is Replay Gain, or dynamic compression if you don't care about dynamics (ie, speech).
Take a music sample from a cd that sounds low (ie from the 90ies).
Make a copy of said sample and add a peak noise somewhere (the kind you hear when you unplug/plug your analog line in).
Make another copy and apply heavy dynamic compression.
Normalize all three. Puzzled? The first sample sounds loud, the second sounds much lower, but the third one sounds the loudest. That's why normalizing is useless, and you need something else.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
This seems like a classic case for the geometric or harmonic means that would net you ~1 or ~2
Seriously, how are you going to regulate the number of wipes used, what colors, how many words are said are used, etc. What is the correct *amount* of techniques used? Go ahead and tell us, genius. Quite stupid.
You're just like the patron in Amadeus telling Mozart there were too many notes in his piece, whilst Mozart replies "then which notes shall I take out?".
Stuff like this is what religions try to foist on us. Your attitude is identical, except your dogma is video.
Good, can we now have sense from Ofcom to force Sky and I note certain freeview channels to do the same.
Maintaining contrast with the adverts was the only reason networks didn't remove all the dynamic range from the programming. Now that the contrast is illegal, there's nothing stopping channel vs. channel competition for loudness. Just as election campaigns target the swing voters, TV producers care about the channel flippers, and being louder than the competition is an easy way to grab their attention.
This law has the perverse consequence of making *everything* sound as bad as the adverts.
I was told that "commercials were not louder" but the audio is compressed so most of the sound hits the peak during the entire commercial. Is it amplitude? If that's the case, they need take the average volume from programming, and "decompress" the audio of commercials to match regular programming. I am not sure if I am saying this correctly, or if it's even possible. Until something is done, I will continue to use my remote to press mute, or lower the volume, when the commercials come on. Annoying commercials make me NOT want to buy.
If you want properly mixed music try DVD audio discs that use Dolby sound. To be Dolby certified it has to limit the amount of compression and include a minimum amount of dynamic range.
Or for older material try to get second hand CDs pressed in the 80s, before the loudness war really started.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Range compression would give you FOR THE SAME VOLUME, -10dB average peaking to +0 on the clean recording and a peak of +0 and average of -3dB on the range compressed.
Integrate the energy and you get much more out of the compressed one and therefore a LOUDER sound, but the same volume.
I think we have government because we all agree pure anarchy is bad.
What does 'pure anarchy' mean anyway? Serious question.
Most people haven't looked seriously into the work done in the past 50 years on stateless societies. Some experiments like Somalia show that the fall of the State leads to improved economic conditions (compared to its neighbors, not teh whole world). Dubai implemented private law when they designed their new society.
Anyway, State-form governments killed half a billion people in the 20th Century between wars and democide, so stateless societies have to at least be that bad before they're dismissed.
Some experiments like Somalia show that the fall of the State leads to improved economic conditions (compared to its neighbors, not teh whole world).
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaha. I cannot believe you just trumpeted warlord-run Somalia, where there is no longer infrastructure to support food distribution or medical provisions or ANYTHING, as an example to promote your idea of anarchy! What a complete joke!
Just change the source code a bit and then recompile... oh you said tivo!
(i.e. you're fucked)
I would pony up cold hard cash for a pay-per-view debate between Brian Blessed and Matt Berry. It would either end in a duel or a duet.
Both the sumary and the article that it links to say that the FCC passed a law. Well, I think this illustrates a problem we have in this country. The FCC can NOT pass a law, only Congress can pass a law. The fact that so many people think that an unelected bureaucracy can pass a law says a lot about why people think that democracy in this country is not working. Of course, the fact that a regulation created by an unelected bureaucracy can so easily be mistaken for a law says a lot about why democracy in this country IS broken.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I like your post. As a Brit, I'd just like to make a couple of clarifications:
They pay a tax to access the BBC there I believe, and in return they get no advertising.
The "tax" you refer to is the TV license, currently £145 per annum. You have to pay it for the privilege of watching any TV in the UK, not just the BBC, although the BBC scoop all the revenue as their core means of funding. As a result of this, the BBC's funding is pretty high, and, above all, stable, hence the (generally) higher quality of programming and the lack of advertisements or overt product placement on the BBC's main UK channels.
Of course, their series are generally pitifully short for a season (say 6-10 episodes in Britain per season, versus 22 in North America).
This has to do with a cultural difference between the way series are written in the UK vs in the US. A typical British drama or comedy series will be written by a single writer or writing partnership. They're simply unable to write a 22-episode season within the time constraints. A comparable US series on the other hand would typically have a team of writers share the writing duties. Both approaches have their merits and drawbacks. Some British shows use the "team" approach - soap operas being the main example. The BBC sitcom My Family was an exception to the general rule of British sitcoms not having a writing team. IMHO, it is an absolutely awful show (even the actors refused to shoot some episodes because the writing was so bad). God only knows how it managed to keep a prime-time slot on BBC one for a decade.
I'm assuming that's why the government acted so late - they were hoping for a free market solution to the problem. Because really, it's silly that the government needs to do something that industry really can do itself. All the government has to do is normally just make whinings about it, and industry goes and does it pre-emptively to prevent regulation.
In this case, no one cared enough at the stations to actually do it, the government gave up waiting for the free market to do something that's generating tons of complaints, and acted on it.
Speaking of which, here in Canada, it seems the History Channel (Canada) is deliberately doing it. The ads are always MUCH louder than the show. The show's at normal volume with rest of channels I watch (except Discovery has seemed to gone DOWN in volume...), but when it switches to ads, the volume jumps sharply. It goes soft during programming again.
And no, I'm not always watching the show, I just know when the commercials are on because they really are louder.
See, that's the thing. This is the government correcting the advertisers for mistakes the consumer is making. I don't like that.
The government could whine all they want. The consumer could whine all they want. If loud advertisements didn't work (particularly for some types of businesses. Obviously they don't work for all), then the businesses wouldn't use them.
Unfortunately, advertisers have seen that when they advertise loudly, they sell more product. Again, this is probably more true in some industries than others (used cars probably get more benefit than soap, as an example). It's unfortunate, but it's true.
If it wasn't, why would they insist on doing it? If advertisers discovered that their ads actually annoyed people enough that people stopped buying the products of the loudest advertisers, then they'd stop. Their goal is to make money. They do anything they can that will help.
Like regulations in general, this law will also make business more difficult and time consuming, essentially reducing profit margins and increasing barriers of entry into the business. The unintended result? Smaller business struggles to compete and make profit while big business is relatively unhindered, making the regulation a case example of "regulatory overtake" where big business want more and more regulations to make sure no one will be able to start up and take their market share, killing innovation and progress.
Market sycophants take note: (/sarcasm) isn't the marketplace supposed to correct for this, so that people who get annoyed by commercials don't buy the stuff and the annoyance stops?
I guess sometimes we actually do need regulation.
Now that the commercials will not be as obnoxious. Could someone pass some rules about the in show commercials for new shows or events? Seriously, I watch a lot of TV and have found large portions of my show blocked by these overlays advertising a new "IRT" tommorrow at 9:00. I couldn't even see what ingredients the Iron Chef used.
Absolutely. In which case, the aural pain caused by blasting for those few seconds would be immediately linked to the product tag line / name. That's negative reinforcement right there. Good marketing ploy.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I think that if a big channel were to show its programs WITHOUT any commericals, they might be able to make more money in the end. Of course, I would have to be able to subscribe just to that channel through my cable company and that is never gonna happen. They are too busy matching up crap channels with the 1 or 2 decent ones in a tiering system that ensures I have to spend $100/mo to get all the stuff I want.
Never heard of HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc.?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One difficult problem with sound leveling is how to distinguish that situation from the situation where you're watching the quiet part of an action movie when there's SUDDENLY SOME VERY LOUD ACTION!!!
In the first instance the user wants the sound leveled. In the second, not so much.
I agree some of these marketers I suspect are smoking meth or something... As a great example there is some commercial showing recently where they start singing the 12 days of Christmas and I hit the mute button so fast I don't even know what product its for... The girl just starts yammering about a bunch of crap and I want to slap her...
This commercial is so annoying the only reason I would want to even know the name of the company that makes it is so I can boycott them...
EBU R128 is the more recent standard (vs replay gain) but the concept is the same. Ultimately, that's what the FCC is calling for if you actually look into what's going on: http://blog.bjornroche.com/2011/12/fcc-calls-for-quieter-commercials-but.html
The FCC is a regulatory, not a legislative body. They are appointed, not elected. Congress authorized them to regulate TV volume in the CALM act last year. Now the FCC has implemented the authority in an order. The FCC's bad enough-- let's not get the impression they're allowed to give themselves new authority.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'd like to see how this plays out during reruns of the "Hush" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Hulu does this all the time and I have to rush to lower the volume if it's later at night. And if I'm wearing headphones, the loud and sudden burst hurts my ears because it takes a few seconds to hit the button to lower the volume.
Netflix > *
One of the many reasons, related to this topic, is that you avoid commercials. Yay Netflix.
Every time I go to the gym, I need to bring earplugs. The dialog can be going at a level that's quiet enough that it's difficult to make out what they're saying, followed by large stretches of very loud sound effects. This is also a big part of the reason why I hate theaters. At least at home, I can apply DNC and have the volume control handy. As for commercials, I basically haven't watched anything on TV since 2006.
Using the Newscast as the standard is fine in peacetime. Advertisers are gonna love war-time volume skewing though.
I guess we should just be happy they didn't choose Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" show as the standard.
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! Head-On, apply directly to the forehead!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwD7RveNE
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaha. I cannot believe you just trumpeted warlord-run Somalia, where there is no longer infrastructure to support food distribution or medical provisions or ANYTHING, as an example to promote your idea of anarchy! What a complete joke!
Time for a bit of epistemology - where do you get your information? Fox News? Some other corporation with a pro-State agenda?
Try a scholarly paper, if your world view will permit the challenge. (citations available on SSRN or Google Scholar, but the PDF is $$$ there).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
FTFY
http://www.acetonestudio.com
And in the UK, we supposedly have regulations already. Thing is, there is no way to legislate against how fucking annoying an advert is.
So, at the start of commercial break, I hit the mute button. The five minutes of peace and quiet really helps to preserve the mood of whatever I'm watching, and there are several ads which I have absolutely no clue about, as to what they are for or even what the fuck they are trying to convey about it. And that's the way I like it.
Basically, it's my first line of defence against meme pollution.
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
EBU R128 is the more recent standard (vs replay gain) but the concept is the same. Ultimately, that's what the FCC is calling for if you actually look into what's going on: http://blog.bjornroche.com/2011/12/fcc-calls-for-quieter-commercials-but.html
Thanks, EBU R128 is the missing piece. It is covered on Wikipedia in the Loudness war article's section on Loudness in broadcasting.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I cannot watch TV anymore. There are very-very few programs I would actually watch but those few have so many commercials and so frequently that i am literally unable to watch them.
When my wife switched providers a month ago I left my home office's TV unconnected. I would actually prefer not having TV (channels). The TV is a good device for games, movies and I use a 40'' as a monitor as well ...
It's the Sounds Obama Censored In Augmented Language Imbedded in Streamed Television Act. Another one of his anti-business attempts to bring more government regulations to the Free Market and stifle natural market forces!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Most people don't want ads, eh? I disagree, and I believe that the proof is in the relatively low number of people willing to directly pay for media rather than allow media to be paid for by advertising. Simply put, less people are willing to pay for HBO than are willing to watch ads on network stations.
Unfortunately more and more are having their cake and eating it too by blocking, skipping, or ignoring advertising on free or advertising-subsidised media, which has led to an increase in the frequency and intrusiveness of advertising to compensate, which ultimately points to a collapse.
Personally, I don't mind ads all that much. Ad-supported media is an all-around winning proposition: producers are rewarded for creating content people want to watch, consumers are provided content at substantially lower direct cost, and advertisers get the opportunity to make their pitches to a strongly self-selected audience (which provides better demographic, economic and geographic targeting than more generalized advertising, such as billboards). For anyone mature enough to understand that creating good content is a labor and capital intensive process, it's hard to imagine a more equitable system for supporting "free" content.
Ads only work as a payment mechanism to the extent that people are willing to pay attention to them and be influenced by them. The audience for ads that force the target to process them at a time not of their choosing, which is unfortunately how a lot of content is funded (TV, radio, newspapers, websites), is shrinking. The revenue is instead going to forms of advertising that are less interruptive and more user-initiated, like search engines and direct mail. But these don't make any real content!
There are two other ways to fund media: up-front payments via subscriptions and micro-payments, and deferred-payments via donations, fees, and affiliate-like bonuses for material that a user found useful.