New California law forces streamers to turn down ad volume
New California law forces streamers to turn down ad volume
On Monday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a law preventing steaming services from offering excessively loud commercials.
The drawbacks to streaming ads are apparent to anyone who has had to sit through them. But there’s a hidden downside to streaming ads that more and more customers are starting to notice. The volume on some streaming commercials has begun to far exceed the volume of the show or movie itself, and California has enacted a new law to combat that trend on behalf of consumers.
Key Details:
- Turn it down: Streaming services are no longer allowed to play commercials louder than the title itself.
- Precedent: In essence, the law requires streamers to follow the CALM Act passed in 2010.
- More to come?: The law could serve as a model for other states.
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 576 into effect. The law forbids streaming services from playing commercials louder than they do the show or movie a viewer is streaming in the state of California, following a flood of complaints to the FCC in recent years regarding the volume of streaming ads.
“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said in a statement.
Essentially, the law extends the rules first laid out in the 2010 CALM Act to streaming services, which were not originally covered in the law. Signed by President Obama, the law stipulates that advertisers must match the loudness of the program they accompany, and are monitored by networks through automated checks.
That law led to complaints of louder commercials on broadcast and cable to plummet, but since they were not included in the regulations, streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and others have taken advantage of their freedom to resume the practice. Now, California is trying to put the kibosh on that pushing of boundaries.
The law doesn’t make it too clear how the state will regulate streaming services, but by requiring streamers to comply with the CALM Act, California’s law could become a model for the rest of the country. Now, it’s up to other states to begin considering measures of their own to curtail excess volume on streaming commercials.
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