A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked?

netbuzz writes "It's been a year since the FCC implemented the CALM Act, a law that prohibits broadcasters from blasting TV commercials at volumes louder than the programming. Whether the ban has worked or not depends on who you ask. The FCC notes that formal complaints about overly loud commercials are on the decline in recent months, but those complaints have totaled more than 20,000 over the past year."

Comments

loud quiet loud quiet

[Anonymous Coward]

It says that on average they must be the same audio level as the programming.
So, they yell, then there is a pause and then someone else yells at you.

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[L4m3rthanyou]

What I'm noticing lately is that they'll mix the commercial audio "creatively" to increase its effective volume. I'll be watching a show on cable with 5.1 audio (so, mostly dialogue out of the center speaker), then have a commercial come on and pipe all its audio through both front speakers, at the "maximum" volume. The levels are probably about the same, but it still gets that "attention jolt" from the perceived increase in volume.

The other annoying trend is the use of excessive "wub wub" (bass) in ad music. Result is the same, increased distraction without "excessive" volume.

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice conspiracy and you may be correct since we all know the sleaze in the ad business but at least for the wub-wub part, that is due to the current popularity amongst teens and young adults with dubstep music. A pic my daughter used to keep on her desktop said "Dubstep- my heart doesn't beat, it wobbles." For an old fuck like me, it is a truly horrendous musical genre that isn't welcome on my lawn. To imagine what it sounds like just envision what you might hear outside of a closed garage door that has 2 Transformers fucking inside. Good ol' Tranformer hate sex. This genre is popular amongst most of the nerd crowd so I dare not post this honest flame under my UID.

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[linebackn]

Another skummy thing I have seen on at least a few instances, a show will reach some climatic scene with important dialog, and before the main character's voice even trails offTOYOTA SAVING!

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[zippthorne]

The problem could easily be solved by, instead of regulating the volume levels, regulating that the media companies cannot own the DVR companies.

The DVR companies would then compete on features, one of which being commercial skip. If the commercials are kind enough to make themselves easily identifiable by noticeably higher volume, the commercial skip feature of your typical DVR will be happy to use that data to accurately slice them out.

The war ends with commercials being better integrated with the content, either through product placement or through matching the style of the content they are inserted in.

That is, as long as the DVR producers are ideologically and financially separate from the companies selling the ads....

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[RoboJ1M]

It is, at least, original.

Tried listening to it recently, it's getting a bit ear bleeding awful.

I liked it when it had some semblance of dub still in it:

https://soundcloud.com/james-neave/dj-loki-ready-for-war

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[RoboJ1M]

Whoops, that don't work no more:

https://soundcloud.com/roboj1m/dj-loki-ready-for-war

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[turp182]

During cooking competition shows, which I do find interesting, they always cut to commercials before announcing the winner. At that point I exclaim, "and the winner is... Commercial Break!".

Tell me again what I should be buying...

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[Anonymous Coward]

A DVR?

What do I win?

Re:loud quiet loud quiet

[mellon]

Maybe if you spent less time making apathetic comments on /. and more time working to change things, it wouldn't be impossible anymore. The fact is that grass roots organizing works, and we've seen it work. Making cynical, apathetic comments also works, but the effect is has is to dissuade people from doing what works.

No complaints here

[sk999]

My analog TV died just before the switch to all-digital. I never replaced it. Been CALM ever since.

Re:No complaints here

[GumphMaster]

I Don't Own a TV

Re:No complaints here

[gl4ss]

a hipster.

by your rules either my mom is a hipster or you're a hipster. a poll would probably agree that you're the hipster given those choices.

The issue has moved to the Internet

[alfrin]

Now that I exclusively use online streaming services to watch television shows, I find the commercial volume issues there are far more irritating than I ever experienced on actual television. Spotify is the worst culprit, since it PAUSES the commercial if you lower your system volume. You cannot even avoid the obnoxiously loud commercials there.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[Russ1642]

Stop using the service then. Seriously. If something is that insanely bad then just go without.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[alfrin]

Stop using the service then. Seriously. If something is that insanely bad then just go without.

That's the equivalent of saying "TV commercials are annoying, so stop watching TV at all." That's not a solution to the actual problem, that's just hiding from it. I love the actual service, I just find the intrusiveness of the commercials unnecessary( and counterproductive to the purpose of commercials i.e. to convince me to buy a product)

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[fermion]

I tend to mute my computer during commercials, especially now that the commercials can run into 3 minutes.

I wonder if the advertisers realize that a commercial on streaming is not the same as a commercial on TV. That a three minute break on TV is ok. After all, if one is watching live TV one can wander around the house and still probably hear the TV, hear the commercial, and get back in time for the show, even if you have to do a live rewind. If you are watching recorded TV, most of the time you can fast forward which means that if a commercial is well made you are at least seeing the branding.

OTOH, since the ads on streaming has become more than a minute, I tend to mute and do something else, then back up the content if I miss something. I have heard TV executives screaming about how mad they are that they can only sell a fraction of advertising on streaming that they can on TV. But what is going to happen when advertisers realize that nobody is going to hand around for three minutes to watch the ads? Probably the same thing that happened to web sites when ad people realized that banner ads were being ignored.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[khellendros1984]

Well, there is always the option to use them as a paid service. As far as the ad-supported version goes, if people (as a whole) avoided ad-supported services, I'm sure the issue would sort itself out one way or another (that is, the business would change its monetization model or go out of business). It seems like hiding in the short term, but it would force the "problem" to solve itself in the long run.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[onyxruby]

This is exactly the kind of issue that should be talked about. I use more than one streaming service and now know not to even bother trying Spotify. This is the market in action, make sure you tell as many people as you can.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[Rockoon]

That's the equivalent of saying "TV commercials are annoying, so stop watching TV at all."

Yes, exactly like a completely valid and rational reaction, and a wholly achievable policy.

Its true: You don't have to use other peoples services unless you choose to ('cept for that whole health insurance mandate.)

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[camperdave]

The purpose of the government is to implement and regulate broadcast standards. It is the government's job to make them turn down the volume.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[rrohbeck]

Adblocking and blackholing DNS names seems to work quite well. It's really rare for me to see an ad.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[CWCheese]

Well that was the whole deal with CATV many decades ago, when it was beginning to be widely marketed they said we would pay for transmission of programming and not see advertising, or a very small amount of ads. We can plainly see how that's turned out, there's much more advertising than content on pretty much every channel except C-SPAN. I don't hate ads, but please we need to see a higher percentage of content versus ads.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[Deadstick]

There's a technique I've noticed lately that seems aimed at defeating the fast-forward. In the middle of a string of five or six commercials, they insert a teaser for the program that's running, in the hope it will make you click "Play" and get ambushed by the next commercial.

Re:The issue has moved to the Internet

[tlhIngan]

I torrent ("pirate") shows and I never have any of these problems. Ever. I'd rather use a service like that but not when they go out of their way to be annoying. You cannot irritate me into buying something. You can't scream at me into buying something. You can be un-obnoxious and treat me with respect and maybe I'll be more receptive to the sales pitch. Till they figure that out, it's pirate bay for me baby.

Except they can take your show off the air because of poor ratings.

Here's a secret - the ratings you see for public viewing by Neilsen is one of three numbers - Live, Live+Same Day, or Live+7 Day. But NONE of these numbers are used by stations when determining if a show is worthwhile to continue or to cancel.

Stations buy the C3 numbers - Commericals Only 3 Day numbers. The huge difference is the L/L+SD/L+7 numbers average the ratings minute-by-minute of the entire program. The C+3 numbers include the minute-by-minute ratings of the commercial breaks only - the programming ratings are NOT included. Basically the ratings stations use measure only the ads - the content is there to attract eyeballs to the ads.

Now, the only correlation is that C+3 ratings are generally very close (usually within 0.1 or 0.2) of the L+SD number.

So TV execs are perfectly happy to ignore piracy - because those people never generate revenue, they have no influence (remember the programming is there to attract eyeballs to see ads). If a show is heavily pirated, it depresses the ratings down and the show either gets its budget cut, or cancelled.

Of course, sometimes the shows still sell ads - in product placement. And it's been shown that even syndicated shows that they have product placement ads inserted into the scene - advertising stuff that wasn't even available when the show originally aired.

The other way is subscriber TV - like how Netflix, Amazon, etc are having their own TV series paid for by subscription dollars.

Probably directly proportional

[fred911]

To the amount of people now viewing broadcast TV. I woulkdfnt even consider viewing commercial TV realtime.

Cut the cord

[Scared Rabbit]

I couldn't tell you. I cut the cord three years ago and haven't looked back. Sure I don't get to see the latest and greatest things, and must instead wait for video/netflix, but it's been worth it.

Re:Cut the cord

[kimvette]

Oh, you're THAT GUY!!

Wrong Forum

[rsborg]

Most /.'s I image don't put up with Ads.

I sure as hell haven't noticed ad volume - of course, I gave up broadcast TV with ads since I got my first TiVo in 2003. DVRs all they way, but nowadays I don't even watch TV that's not Netflix - only the kiddos have time to watch TV in our house (how else would I have time to post on /. ?)

Re:I can legislate everything!

[reboot246]

No, station owners want you to be able to hear the commercials even if you're in the kitchen or bathroom (or, for some commercials, even outside).

It's not the commercials.

[mythosaz]

...it's the switch from national programming to regional or zip-code based advertising.

Program.
National commercial.
National commercial.
REGIONAL COMMERCIAL
Program.

My cable network screws this up regularly on Comedy Central. South Park goes into break, and then a BLARING LOUD commercial for a local product happens.

I skip most commercials that aren't on during live sports -- but I watch a lot of live sports, and they're guilty too.

I blame an idiot working in the Cox video operations center.

Re:It's not the commercials.

[zippthorne]

Also, the local commercials are often SD, even on the cable company's own HD channels (which appear to be OTA-HD channels that have been transcoded, poorly, to a lower bitrate...).

Not only SD, but also they don't even deign to let my TV do the up-conversion, they've converted it for me to the "higher resolution" of HD. And often double-letterboxed, too, because apparently it's too expensive to up-convert all the way from 480 to 1080...

Streaming commercials are the worst

[emBEDed]

The volume of the commercials in SyFy's streaming videos is what drove me to install AdBlock, so in that case it backfired on them. TV commercials don't seem nearly as obnoxious as they used to, but maybe it's just me.

Crecendo

[themushroom]

Here's what happens at my house at commercial breaks on Comcast: The program is fairly quiet, the beginning of the advertisement is just as quiet (CALM in effect) but in the last 10-20 seconds you sense that the volume is going up to just below a shout... then the show resumes and it's quiet again.

No teeth in the law

[wcrowe]

The volumes haven't changed. Except it now seems like they start at a reasonable volume, then slowly increase in volume as the commercial continues. It could be that some people don't notice this. This also, no doubt, allows a commercial to still comply with the law since the ad's "average volume" can still be within the limits of the program it accompanies.

The complaint process itself is also extremely tedious. No person is going to want to key in all that information for every loud ad they have to suffer through.

In short: all the teeth were taken out of the law, so as usual we have another useless law that doesn't work and helps no one except those it is intended to control. Government by the people, my ass.

BTW, I'm seeing a lot of posts about how watching broadcast TV is "old-school", as if it is stupid to still be doing so. I would agree, except that it is still virtually impossible to watch live sporting events online. I'm not a sports nut, but I do like college football, and that means suffering through a lot of deafening ads.

     

Oh ads...

[LudeJim]

I have had Netflix for about 4 years or so, and I also *had* a cable subscription. Netflix does not have any ads what-so-ever. Last week I saw a free trial for Hulu Plus and I jumped on it. I was appalled that a paid service would have ads displayed in the middle of a show, then I realized that I pay for cable tv and that there are ads in the middle of all of those shows. Now, all I have is Netflix, and I am ad free. Even since I realized this, I find it disgusting that any paid service have any type of advertising.

Groucho's solution

[TheloniousToady]

"I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on [too loud], I go to the library and read a good book."
- Groucho

Since I'm not as much of a reader as Groucho, I just mute the television when the commercials are too loud. Beyond solving the immediate problem, there's a certain moral satisfaction in it. Heck, maybe it even constitutes some form of Pavlovian conditioning for the advertisers: after all, if they think loud commercials work, they must think that muted commercials don't.

PRECISELY.

[Controlio]

I'm an audio mixer for several of the national and regional networks. I deal almost exclusively in live sports, and I can tell you we are monitored to a ridiculous degree. We have averaging meters in our trucks (measured in LKFS), and the TOC monitors the show AND commercials (in DB on a 3s average). The TOC logs the averages with timecode and video thumbnails (for reference) and saves them, as they are the only defense they have against CALM complaints. The TOC is quick to notify us during the show if we're too loud or too quiet and the averaging is out of compliance.

The problem is, no one at home is smart enough to know the difference between a national spot, a local spot, and a spot that your cable provider inserts. So the complaint becomes "Fox Sports played a loud commercial!!1!!!1!!!one!!!" when the culprit is actually the Comcast head-end in Gary, Indiana.

Between the meters, the logging, and the constant monitoring, broadcast is jumping through a lot of hoops to be CALM compliant. But the networks don't have end-to-end control of their signal, and the end user is at the mercy of their local cable headend. Almost all of the problems you experience happen there. I can't tell you how many times we find a surround downmix where the announcers are almost inaudible, because a cable operator (and sometimes even a satellite provider) is doing an improper downmix, and the 4.1 channels are blowing out the center on the stereo feed. The networks try to QC as much as they can - most of the network offices have receivers for every cable and satellite (and FiOS, AT&T, etc) service they can get their hands on, and constantly monitor as many of them as they can - trying to find and fix the problems proactively rather than wait for the vague and usually inaccurate complaints to roll in from the FCC.

Re:TV at negative extra charge

[anagama]

I just get the internet without TV.

The reason I gave up any sort of connection originally was because I'd wake up on a weekend, and then mindlessly flip channels never finding anything I wanted to watch, and feeling frustrated. I wasted a lot of beautiful days in this fashion. Kind of like how a heroin addict has to give it up completely, I decided I didn't want to waste my life watching stuff that was bad to begin with, and worse, interspersed with commercials.

So anyway, yes, I pay a little more for my internet but I only watch what I actually want to watch, and I watch it on my schedule. The few extra bucks are worth it to me because like any hardcore drug addict, if I had TV I'd watch it, hate it, waste time, feel frustrated, and not be able to stop. I'm simply not able to be a casual watcher -- even when I go to friends' places, if they have the TV on, I just get totally sucked in and mesmerized by it. For people who can use it reasonably, it makes a lot of sense to save a few bucks. For me though, that would be a disaster.