Fri Oct 01 10:22:55 PDT 2010
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LOUD COMMERCIALS to become illegal?
All of us have been there... we’re enjoying our favorite TV program - i.e. NewsChannel 7 at Six, ;-) - when suddenly A COMMERCIAL STARTS SCREAMING AT AS ABOUT HOW MUCH WE NEED THEIR PRODUCT! We’re scrambling for the remote to turn it down. Meanwhile, the baby has woken up, the dog has started barking at the apparent intruder making all the noise, and our significant other is yelling at us to TURN IT DOWN! The whole house has been thrown into chaos, all because of one commercial that was much louder than the program it played during.
We get calls from viewers about the problem every now and then, and our engineers tell us they’ve done as much as they can to minimize the problem... but it certainly hasn't gone away completely.
Well, soon our problem may be over, or at least not nearly as bad. The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM for short, passed the U.S. Senate Wednesday, and looks to be on its way to becoming a law. You can check out the Bill and its progress here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s2847/show It says, in short, that cable companies and other TV programming distributors would be required to keep commercials at about the same audio level as the TV programs.
What do you think? Is it important enough to make a law? Do you even watch commercials, or do you watch your TV on your DVR, and start skipping ahead when the commercial break hits?
