The Failure of Self-Regulation

Governments eagerly get involved when a business gives them an excuse.  Congress today passed a law empowering the FCC to regulate the volume of TV commercials called the CALM Act.   

“Loudness” is not as simple as a speedometer on your car – which is part of the reason why the FCC has ducked this issue up until now.   There used to be vague rules about ad volume, but they were removed in 1984 during era of Reagan deregulation.  Human  hearing is not linear – certain frequencies are more clearly heard or perceived as loud.   Most audio on Radio/TV uses some form of Digital Signal Processing – an electronic version of a graphics equalizer to create a pleasing balanced sound, based on the type of programming.   Also, certain types of sounds (sirens, doorbells, ringing phones, yelling used car salesmen) attract your attention even though they aren’t technically “loud”.

Democracy now will “solve” that problem by giving yet more power to the Federal Government.   The Loudness Committee will now have powers to regulate the volume of advertisements.  Note that this applies to Cable TV, which further expands the powers of the FCC over non-broadcast media.   The Internet is not far away.  We can’t be having obnoxious things on YouTube – know what I mean?

A number of people have noticed (and pointed out) that streaming radio stations frequently reset the volume of the Media Player to Maximum volume during ads, and disable mute.  This is a lot of why they use custom players and not just the basic media players.    Radio can get the message blaring ads at full volume at 2 AM when the volume is turned down is not acceptable behavior – or they can feel the wrath of their listeners when you’ve pissed off enough of your customers that they demand the government “do something”.  Ball’s in your court.