New FCC rule regulates TV commercial volume

The Federal Communications Commission has passed a new regulation known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM). The new measure aims to combat obnoxiously loud television commercials, an issue…

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Wonderful. Just what we need. The government regulating something else. Smh

Actually these are really annoying, specially because they more likely announce crap :s

I agree they are annoying as hell and usually it turns me off to whatever theyre trying to sell me but I don't need or want the government to step in and start telling people what to do and what not to do. I've got a remote, I can turn down the volume myself. I don't wanna pay for this crap regulation.

Actually it seems like the TV could have a built in circuit to deal with this as it's not a hard technical problem to resolve. The purpose of the government is to regulate and make laws, at least they are trying to do something about this issue. In the mean time the mute button works fine.

Considering how obnoxiously loud commercials are then I have to say, yes, regulate them. Obviously writing and calling to complain doesn't work. But I guess it's more important for you to know what smart phones ATT is selling while you take your bathroom break down the hall.

BTW, you aren't the one who should be paying for it. It's the people making ungodly amounts of money and want to give less to America. Give corporations tax cuts but raise taxes on people who live pay check to pay check. Stupid big government battle cry, tired of hearing it. I guess if you don't want the Gov to regulate things like clean water, the roads, schools and other infrastructure that they(we) pay for and create jobs, you can just leave the US. I, however, like having roads to drive on and clean water to drink so I'm going to continue paying for them.

O'well, the GOP has proven themselves to be incapable of logic. I guess the sheep that fallow them are no different.

Now, if only they would regulate Internet commercials... but that'll probably take another 50 years too.

Well, I would hate for this to turn into a political debate seeing as those rarely accomplish anything eg. Congress. But I'd have to say that infrastructure is a national interest so that would definitely require regulations. However, the volume if a commercial? I can't see how there is any national interest at stake here.

I'm sure people have complained to advertisers and it didn't work. Then they asked the government to step in and do something about it, so they did. This laissez-faire attitude towards everything just doesn't work. This is a small sign of a bigger problem. National interest is not a big part of this, but I'm sure the majority of the population hates being bombarded with commercials even if they walk out of the room. "Just hit the mute button," yeah, or they could just NOT do it in the first place. You wouldn't let someone walk into your house and just turn the volume up on your TV, especially during commercials. I don't care if that person is in my house or at a desk in an office building, that person doesn't have the right to come into my living room. I didn't pay tons of money for a sound system to hear Ads all over my house.

On another note, I would love a political argument

I would love a good debate as well but here is not the proper place. Too many people wouldn't be able to conduct themselves in a appropriate and intelligible manner. But anyway, I would go to the tv stations before going to government. They are the ones that agree to run the ads. If it was made clear to the stations that we aren't watching because they run intrusive ads then the ads would go away. On another note the government can't just willy nilly make laws here and there so national interest does play a part. They may cite the interstate commerce clause as to why they can get involved. But my personal belief is that these commercial are mere inconvenience to most people and are not actually doing any harm so the handing a wee bit more power to the government is not the answer. Oh and as far as the whole "make the rich pay", I don't need rich people to pay my bill. I can work my own *** off and pay for myself just fine.

Yes, you can work your *** off as they sit in their offices counting their money. They make so much that they couldn't spend all that in a lifetime. My weekly pay check hardly lasts me 6 days. But lets extend their tax cuts and tag another $1,000/yr bill to my taxes. Bush tax cuts haven't really done anything to create jobs and after 10 years of failure I'm surprised we extended them. Do you realize how much corporations pay to lobby tax cuts? Ever since the Supreme Court ruled corporations are people and can donate unlimited amounts of money to a candidate politics is over. If you look up the records of who voted for these(all this information is publicly available) you'll see that overwhelmingly so The republican party is against regulation and taxes. BTW, watch out for fracking in your area, oil and gas companies don't have follow the clean water act.

I'm from good 'ol Georgia! No fracking going on here. Although I've contemplated moving out to the Dakotas to get in on the action. I'm not gonna talk politics here.

People think it's annoying as hell and the private sector didn't do a thing about it. So government is stepping in to regulate it. Common sense! Who knew government's still exercised it?

I've complained to my cable service provider about this very issue. They said that they do offer audio quality guarantees for the shows, but not the commercials. Commercials were unregulated, and that they were sorry for the excessive volume that commercials displayed. I've tried my TV's built-in audio compression setting, and this didn't help. I've been turning the volume down in the past, then skipping commercials altogether with a DVR. But, recently I've canceled my cable service over not tjust this issue, but also the cost of their service. I have switched to using Netflix to watch anything on my TV. And I probably wont come back to regular TV until the prices are cut significantly. Competition of services hasn't swung into the price bracket that I'm willing to pay ($15 - 30 /mo. for all program channels with HD service and a DVR.)

"They are the ones that agree to run the ads."

Wrong. It's called full-barter syndication, and affiliates do not get to choose what commercials are in the programming (or at what volume) when they receive it. Please take an electronic media and film class if you are in college.

True in some cases but not all. Seems that small local stations use this system most often. I however don't watch these stations generally so I can't speak for them.

"the FCC has received over 6000 complaints since 2008" that's it? Only 6000 since 2008?!

And such a low number of complaints warrants the gov stepping in?

This is just as stupid as the recent ruling in Europe that stops water companies from saying water helps stop de-hydration, we're in the middle of a recession here?!

Sometimes I really do worry about who has such power in this world to be able to enforce such rubbish.

Okay, now I'm curious papa. What do you mean people like me? A medical or sensitivity condition?

Someone didn't read the article...

The FCC has received over 6,000 complaints regarding loud commercials since 2008. According to the Consumer Union, the issue has been a top complaint in 21 of the past 25 reports they have released.