Stay tuned for less volume
Published 5:43 pm Thursday, September 30, 2010
Oh, the partisanship and strife in Congress; C-SPAN is running disclaimers that despite the content of its coverage, the scenes are not taken from episodes of “Real Housewives of D.C.”
The bickering, the posturing, the bill hostage-holding. Is there is nothing upon which elected leaders — and citizens — can agree?
As it happens, just in the Nickelodeon of time, an issue which bonds all Americans, and their representatives, has come to the fore. The common enemy: LOUD COMMERCIALS. The BLARING pitchmen that follow the transition from show to advertisement. The SCREECHING ads that make you the world’s quickest draw on the remote to trigger the “mute” button, which must defeat the purpose of the commercial. (Rendering it “moot”?)
The beautiful bipartisanship moment came late Wednesday when the Senate unanimously passed a bill, similar to one already passed by the House, to require television stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as programs, the Associated Press reported. (Of course, bipartisanship only goes so far — the bills will be reconciled after the election.)
Apparently, as long as there has been TV, there have been complaints about loud commercials. But, until now, supposedly, no one had the technical expertise to achieve the dream of uniform volume. In 1984, of all years, the FCC declared that there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the “apparent loudness” of ads. (Apparent loudness. Yes, everyone was just imagining that they needed to turn down the sound.)
Now that we are living in the Era of Technology, the FCC could no longer argue that the extra-complicated volume problem couldn’t be overcome. You have the capability to watch TV on your phone, but for some reason that gosh darn Gieco pig has to squeal at jet volume?
Some stations might have to buy some new equipment to make it work, but otherwise they’ve got it figured out how to control the apparent loudness. A historic day for technology, and TV viewers.
The Senate calls its legislation the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. Sure. Sounds more official than turn down the sound, and more polite than the SHUT UP act.
The bill requires the FCC to adopt the recommendations as regulations within a year and begin enforcing them a year later, with exceptions for big TV days, like the Super Bowl. (Just kidding, please remain CALM.)
Now for the next great technological advancement: The discovery that it really wouldn’t be so difficult to let people pick and choose which channels they want, and pay for only those.
