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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.
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
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.
"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
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
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.
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.
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.
Or, you know, you could take responsibility and junk Sirius yourself until they toned it down.
Going "wahhh this thing isn't what I want, but I'm going to keep paying for it" does not help you.
I would suggest that people not being able to hear the program playing at all while in another room and suddenly hearing a commercial blaring constitutes more than just a perceived loudness difference.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It is louder, it's just not amplified. The (RMS) average power of the sound wave is greater, without increasing the peak value. This is how they get around simple amplitude limits and why modern legislation requires more sophisticated methods of measuring loudness.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry to wax so eloquent about this, but audio processing is one of my loves. :)
> a "smart" detector that not only examines peak amplitude, but also the AVERAGE.
A professional broadcast audio processor divides the audio into several different bands, then uses all sorts of proprietary algorithms to "decide" where and when to apply compression. The peak limiters are even more sophisticated: our Vorsis AirAura processor, for example, splits the audio into 31 different bands(!) and uses psychoacoustic masking to hide any generated artifacts. (For the curious: http://vorsis.com/audio-processors/airaura-digital-audio-processor.html) It is, without exception, one of the most amazing audio processors I've ever heard. When it's adjusted properly, it's a transparent as a piece of wire.
In radio, our product IS the audio. The sound. We want it ALL to be loud and clean, but we cannot overmodulate (i.e., "overdrive" the transmitter input).
The key, of course, is to ADJUST it properly. It takes a lot of work and patience. I consider it a specialty, and there are others (the corporate chief for Cumulus, Gary Klein, is considered something of a processing "guru" amongst my brethren). A small, unattended TV operation isn't going to devote the time and attention needed. A cable operator has neither the skill nor the personnel.
(Shoot, I've complained to some of our satellite network providers about widely varying audio levels. Some have admitted to me that they don't even have processing on the audio: it's straight from the mike into the uplink. With hundreds of channels, it would cost millions of dollars to put truly effective compression and limiting on each one, so they don't even bother.)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.