Please lower that. It’s too loud. Where is the remote control? You have it. I don’t have it. Why is it so loud?
We were all there. It livened up the show when the commercial suddenly blew in a volume that suddenly blew its ears into. The new bill that will now pass through the California Legislature is aiming to change that.
Senate Bill 576 prohibits video streaming services that offer California consumers to air commercial advertising at a more audio level than major video content.
The bill was written by Sen. Tom Amberg (D. Santa Anna) and told Calmatters that the inspiration came from the baby, Samantha Rose.
“He said that Legislator Zach Keller has a young daughter named Samantha Rose. The baby finally settled down, and the parents calmed down and relaxed, watching the show as the ads came out loud.”
The bill argues that consumers are increasingly exposed to loud, destructive advertising without regulatory protection. “This bill will improve the viewing experience, protect individuals with hearing sensitivity, including seniors, children and people with hearing processing impairments, and from a sudden, harsh noise surge,” the bill states.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because similar laws already exist at the federal level.
The Commercial Advertising Loudness Reduction Act (Calm) Act was passed in 2010 after the Federal Communications Commission received more than 130,000 complaints. However, the law only applied to broadcast and cable television.
Streaming services did not exist at the time, but later worked with “loudness loopholes.”
But times have changed. Umberg has become less common as 83% of US households use at least one streaming service
“Many platforms have introduced a step-by-step subscription model where consumers have to pay a premium to avoid commercials, bringing the ad support viewing and loud volumes of those ads back to their focus on millions of users,” he argues.
The bill appears to have strong support in the California Legislature, but it also faces opposition. Groups including the Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance argue that streaming is fundamentally different to traditional broadcasting and cables, and that federal standards should not be applied unilaterally to streaming platforms.
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