FCC GETTING POWER TO TURN DOWN COMMERCIALS

A new law aimed at keeping TV commercials at sane volumes is now headed to President Obama’s desk. The bill is called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, and was first proposed by Californian representative Anna Eshoo. Once signed into law, the bill will require commercials to be at the same decibel levels as the programs in which they are embedded. If they aren’t, the FCC will have a mandate allowing them to regulate and enforce volume limits on commercials.

The issue of overly loud television commercials isn’t new, although it does seem to have become a more noticeable practice lately. When submitting her bill, Representative Eshoo noted that the FCC has had complaints about overly loud commercials since the 1960s, and the issue has actually been the number one consumer complaint about television in 21 out of the last 25 FCC quarterly reports.

“Consumers have been asking for a solution to this problem for decades, and today they finally have it,” Eshoo said in a statement. “Consumers will no longer have to experience being blasted at—it’s a simple fix to a huge nuisance.”

Of course, don’t expect any of this to happen right away: the commercial industry has been given a whole year to bring their practices in line with the FCC’s expectations. For the next twelve months at least, expect commercials to be as loud and obnoxious as they’ve ever been. [Geek]