Now Hear This: House Subcommittee Approves Commercial Loudness Bill [Multichannel News]
Last month I did something that I don't usually do when I posted about the need for the federal government to create rules for making television advertisements and programming volumes uniform. Now legislation is moving forward in the U.S. House of Representatives that will address this issue.
Called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act and sponsored by California Rep. Anna Eshoo, CALM aims to prevent those loud volume spikes often caused by disparities between television shows and the commercials inserted during breaks. Yesterday the House Telecommunications Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the CALM Act, moving it to the full committee for a vote.
CALM would require the FCC to adopt volume standards within a year of passage and then gives broadcasters and cable operators another year to install equipment that will make sure programming and commercials meet those volume standards. The end goal of CALM is preventing television viewers from being blasted off the couch by dramatic changes in ad and program volume.
With CALM's passage, programmers, advertisers, broadcasters and cable operators will all have the same volume standard to adhere to, eliminating the technical problems that broadcasters and cable operators have in creating a uniform volume between sources that often have volume differences. I'm pleased to see that the Congress is taking this first step toward enactment of CALM.
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