Friday, December 03, 2010

Quit Hollerin' at Me

Though Congress still bickers over net neutrality, spying on Americans, and universal health care, at least Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing: TV commercials are too damned loud. After approval by the House, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act is now on its way to President Obama’s desk. It was passed by the Senate earlier this year.

[...]

Once signed, the CALM Act will give the FCC a mandate to regulate and enforce volume limits on commercials, ensuring that their maximum loudness does not exceed the average maximum loudness of the program they’re accompanying. Advertisers will have one year to implement technology to keep the volume levels in check.

  Wired

A year?

Years ago, I had a Motorolla that you could set to dampen the volume on commercials to the same volume as the program. Why didn’t more TV makers use that technology? I would have thought it would be an excellent way to promote sales. I don’t know if Motorolla kept making them, and I wonder if there was some pressure somewhere that actually prevented TV makers from widely implementing that technology.

Finally, John Prine will be able to watch TV again.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!