Even the word “Washington” can be immediately political and polarizing for some these days. There’s no doubting that we live in an age of divisive politics, but one issue that all can surely agree on is the annoyance of loud commercials.
There was a time when ads on every TV source could be much louder than the actual content people turned on their sets to watch. That was before 2010, however, when Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which regulated how loud commercials on broadcast TV.
However, the television industry has undergone an enormous transformation in the intervening years. Today, commercials that play alongside ad-supported streaming are increasing in volume once again, and Eshoo and Whitehouse are reintroducing a modernized version of their bill that would restrict the volume of streaming ads as well.
“I authored the CALM Act in 2010 with Senator Whitehouse to put an end to the booming ads on TV that were highly annoying for consumers,” Eshoo said. “Since the law was enacted, new popular streaming services have recreated the practice of loud ads because the old law doesn’t apply to them, and consumers continue to complain about loud ads on broadcast, cable, and satellite TV.”
The modernized CALM Act was first brought to the attention of legislators last May. No action was taken on it at that time, but now Eshoo and Whitehouse are bringing it to the floor of Congress once again. The bill would give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a mandate to investigate the effectiveness of the act and set a timeline of 180 days for the FCC to come up with guidelines for how loud streaming ads can be. Those rules would kick in another 180 days after the announcement.
That means that an actual reduction in the volume of streaming ads is at least a year away, and likely more, considering the usually-glacial pace of Congress. Still, there’s no doubt that the legislation would benefit consumers. Nearly half of all Americans are watching ad-supported streaming, and one media executive thinks free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) will be bigger than cable and satellite combined within the next two years. More people every day are watching ad-supported streaming, and quieter commercials will mean a better user experience for all… if the modernized CALM Act passes, of course.