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New Bill To Lower The Volume For You

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From CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- It's after dinner. You're tired. You ease yourself into a comfortable place to watch your favorite TV show. Suddenly you're jolted from your couch potato demeanor by a commercial break.

It's an ad for insurance or rum or a credit card -- and it's blaring, invading your calm and boosting your blood pressure.

Marketers want the loud commercials to grab viewers' attention.

A Democratic representative from California, however -- and her fellow politicians in the House -- find them more annoying than effective.

In her crusade to eliminate the nuisance, Rep. Anna Eshoo wrote the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM, which mandates that TV commercials be no louder than the programs in which they appear.

Representatives unanimously passed the bill last month and sent it to the Senate for consideration.

The brief measure directs the Federal Communications Commission to develop regulations preventing ads from being "excessively noisy or strident" or "having modulation levels substantially higher than the accompanying program." The bill also addresses "average maximum loudness."

The volume of television commercials is a common complaint among viewers. One man told CNN, "Every time you put on the TV and try and watch a show, the next thing you get are these really loud commercials."

A woman added, "I usually mute the television."

"This is a dumb bill but I love it. I really do," said media analyst Mark Hughes. He said that for irritated Americans it strikes a nerve, even though it's not a huge political issue.

"It's important to people. And it's important in my household that I don't wake up the kids when they're sleeping, and I don't tick off my wife when she tells me to turn it down" because of a commercial's high volume.

Eshoo said she's been swamped with mail, e-mail and phone calls from people who have thanked her for the bill.

Political strategist John Ashford said there is some attraction to an issue that is manageable, as opposed to the complex issues Congress often struggles with.

"Having worked on Capitol Hill and now working in public relations, I know that when Congress can't solve big problems like Iraq and Afghanistan and 10 percent unemployment and how to implement this health care bill they are trying to pass, they turn to small problems like blasting television commercials."

Under the measure, advertisers and production houses would have one year to adopt technology that modulates and sets sound levels -- and apply it to TV commercials.

The FCC will do its part, a source there said.

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You know what the worst part is... I'd gladly pay some company that came up with an addition to my TV that accomplished that very same thing.

When government and a good portion of the people start looking to the state to "fix" things like this, the battle is all but lost.

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Unless that device (call it the "smart volume control" or SVC) could be put *into* the TV downstream from the tuner, it would have to tune, modify, and then convert the signal back to RF (or not do so and feed it into your component or HDMI inputs, which makes it an external component much like a VCR, DVR, or Blu Ray). Perhaps TV manufacturers could include it in the TV? It would certainly be worth a lot more than many of the other features they stick in. Which makes me wonder why they haven't.

It might be that the problem is figuring out when the thing should kick in and reduce the volume. Let's say I watch a show, and in the middle of some scene where two people are talking, I set my desired volume. Maybe 60 seconds later the discussion turns into an argument, lots of yelling and screaming. That *should* be louder, yet the SVC mutes it because it's louder than the show was when you set your desired volume. Now it goes to something quiet... which is now totally inaudible becuase your max loudness setting has crammed everything down 10 dB. Should the SVC now raise that volume for you? If so, what should it do if there actually is silence? Amplify whatever electronic noise is in the system? How does it know what's noise and what is signal? It would be nice if the thing was smart enough to know what is a commercial "please control this" and what isn't "don't control this, I want the dynamic range".

The only way to accomplish that would be to put a tag on the signal, "this is a commercial" and there is no way in hell the broadcasters will ever agree to do that. Such a tag would make it possible for the viewer to *completely skip* the commercials if they are DVRing the show--maybe even have the DVR drop them on the floor and not record them. And the broadcasters are paid to put the commercials into your system, and have no contractual obligation to you, the viewer--all they have to do is put on something interesting enough to entice you to put up with the commercials. (This is the same reason we will never be rid of junk mail--the post office's obligation is not to you but to the sender. In this case of course ending government-mandated subsidies to the junk mailers would help.)

Yes, I would love to see such a device, but unless it's made too stupid to be useful, all you will get is commercials attempting to fool it into thinking they are part of the regular show.... or worse, commercials actually built into the show.

Having said all that... a *law* is the wrong solution on principle (though I have to admit it'd be emotionally satisfying--I find the desperate and downright rude measures some advertisers go through to "push" themselves into my awareness despite my attempts to shut them out very annoying). I found my cure for this particular problem quite some time ago... I don't watch TV.

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I don't particularly mind that someitmes, by no means always, the commercials are louder than the shows. For one thing it lets you know the commercials are over while you're using the bathroom, getting a snack or making a quick phone call.

But some channels do have commercials that are too loud. IN aprticular the Sci-Fi channel in Latin America is an egregious offender. The base volume is so low I have to turn the volume all the way up just to be able to hear the dialogue. Then I have to turn it all the way down in order not to go deaf from the commercials and promos (and changing the channel si a chore, too, involving sound levels). Lately all I see there is SGU and reruns of SG-1. They show Trek and Sliders dubbed (shudder)

BTW remeber the novel Contact? The rich guy who befriends Ellie made his money with complementary products called "Ad-Nix" and "Preach-Nix." They would automatically switch channels when either an ad or a religious show came up.

Anyway, I'm quite capable of ignoring, tuning out, or watching commercials as I choose to. I don't need a law to "protect" me from them. It's offensive to think I do.

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A number of years ago there was a radio talk show host in Detroit named David Newman and he used to refer to big, intrusive government with a special term. Rather than calling it the "nanny state" he called it the "nanny goat state". In other words, like a nanny goat, this government intrudes upon and devours just about anything within its reach. If it exists, the US government thinks it can regulate it.

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