They say “average” volume. What do they mean by that? Or, more precisely, how are they measuring that? RMS? LUFS?
Probably LUFS, but even with LUFS there are ways to make perceived volume louder while remaining within a threshold
Imagine seeing ads…
Me every year at super bowl time: ❔
I still don’t get the people who say they are going to watch the Super Bowl for the ads, then the day after the game they’re bitching about how terrible the ads were.
I’m like… yeah… they are ads…
Admittedly back in the .com days there were some good ones.
I miss when ads were fun and you’d watch the superbowl to see the new California raisins animation and Michael Jackson video.
Smooth Criminal was amazing the first time it aired. Still great, but the long video blew us away.
Louder commercials than TV have long been illegal, but they don’t enforce it. I know someone however that used to call or email or whatever the station to complain when they did it and they would stop for at least a bit because of those laws that went mostly unenforced.
But the less cynical more hopeful generations before us had passed those common sense laws and enforced them at one point.
You can file complaints with the FCC, but the FCC doesn’t actively monitor it. The biggest problem is that no matter how the law is written, they will find ways to abuse it. The law actually requires that the average volume of the ad not be greater than the average volume of the show. And it even specifies that the average is a running average, not just the peak vs lowest. But then loud portions of the show pump that average up. Like let’s say that during the credits you play really loud music, or really loud bloopers, well that would bump average. And if the commercial had a really long quiet period, like a long section where someone whispers the side affects a medication, well that bumps your loudest allowable portions up. They can also wait for the quietest part of a show to make the difference more significant.
And there’s much more that they can do that makes it seem louder, like frequency boosting and audio compression that are all totally legal. So, they can actually bump the apparent “loudness” of a commercial quite a bit and still be legal.Yeah they had their chance. Audio streaming services have (mostly) managed to figure out licensing agreements so all music is on all platforms.
Video streaming services all created their own walled gardens with various levels of advertising. Paramount even offered an advertising free tier but would happily advertise their own shows before other shows (noticed specifically on Star Trek shows but I imagine other providers do it too).
In the end… Fuck them. I give up on trying to figure out streaming video with all its complications. Back to the seven seas to procure my own.
Excuse me, I am finally glad I’m in California for a reason besides the food
On one hand, this, on the other hand, y’all are trying to destroy the entire concept of property rights by putting government-snitch DRM in 3D printers. You’ve got some work to do to crawl out of that net negative.
Wow. Way to hunt down one of the few issues we’re dealing with. An issue other states are also dealing with.
It is shitty, but go to Idaho and tell us we’re not doing well (if you aren’t arrested for some crazy draconian law, of course).
Yeah, this unfortunately. The Californian government is nuts
You’re taking a lot for granted then. Seek out some broader perspective
Happy Cake Day!
I think if I experience this a number of times, I’ll stop watching that channel.
Imagine when your grandmother watches them, it is already turned up too loud.
This is me, but with my grandfather instead of grandma. He can barely hear anything, so he cranks his TV up too. I think it’s almost 60 now. up from like mid 30’s from 3 years ago.
And yeah, YouTube is a hostile offender of that. He watches everything on a Gemini device, because that device is the only way you can lock in your price for two years. Otherwise, they hold the right to jack you up to almost $50 more a month after 2 months of having service, so I can’t just throw an ad-blocker style thing on it because it’s directly controlled by DirecTV.
And you can always tell when it hits an ad break, because you can literally feel the ad vibrating the floor.
I feel bad for my gram because she doesn’t remember/know how to reduce the volume on her own, and every damn time I turn it down he turns it back up again the next time he enters the room.
Dude I got tinnitus. I watch louder than gran
Wowsers!
I feel MAD Magazine was already lampooning loud ads in the 1960s… plus ca change
Now do broadcast TV.
That was passed federally in 2010 under the CALM Act
Oh wow. In that case it is definitely not being followed on my local stations.
Focusing on the real problems of our time
Didn’t takeaway from anything else to do this. Grow up.
How many times do we have to get laws like this passed?
I swear I feel like all consumer protections have just been thrown out.
