New law authorizing FCC regulation of advertising loudness

[Dan.Strassberg]

For what seem like decades and decades, the advertisers, agencies, and
broadcasters have maintained that whatever it is that makes a
commercial sound louder than noncommercial program content, the
perception is subjective and unmeasurable. And they have prevailed
against regulation of loudness of commercials for all that time. Now
that there is legislation requiring that commercials not seem louder
than other content to viewers/listeners, do you think the advertisers,
agencies, and broadcasters are going to drop their argument? I don't.
This might be the first legislation that passed in the Democratically
controlled Congress to be repealed by the new (at least half)
Republican-controlled Congress. I have never understood why objective
measurements of loudness are so difficult when a whole industry of
companies such as Orban has grown up designing, manufacturing, and
marketing equiment to control loudness. Of course, Mr Orban and his
competitors, who don't want to anger the companies that buy their
equipment, will agree that standards can't be created, but like
obscenity, loud commercials can be discerned by those who hear them.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org>
To: <bri@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 8:41 PM
Subject: New law authorizing FCC regulation of advertising loudness


> The White House press office announced today that President Obama
> had
> signed into law "S. 2847, the 'Commercial Advertisement Loudness
> Mitigation or the 'CALM Act,' which requires the Federal
> Communications Commission to prescribe a regulation limiting the
> volume of audio on commercials transmitted by television broadcast
> stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming
> distributors."
>
> -GAWollman
>