Loud TV Commercials: Should They be Illegal?

There's nothing worse than having a sweet Home Theater Setup, complete with finely tuned 7.1 digital audio, wrecked by some obnoxious television commercial. The increased audio level pierces the ears of you, your family and your guests. It is the equivalent of a solicitor barging, un-invited into your home with a mega-phone pointed right at your head. "Buy our Soap!!"

While this issue has been put before Congress by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) under the name of the CALM Act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation), it seems the bill has fallen through the cracks. While it does seem that Congress has enough things to worry about. This does seem like something that should be relatively easy to fix.

Advertising companies and the Television Broadcast Companies they support have effectively hidden behind the explanation that the volume is not technically any louder than the Television Programs themselves. The argument is that the TV Shows mix their audio for dramatic effect and do not always use the peak levels allowed by the broadcast companies. However, Television Commercials mostly mix the audio toward the peak levels since most of the time there is no need for dramatic effect.

I further suspect that there is more going on than that. While watching South Park, I always have to raise the volume on the TV. It seems that the audio is purposely low. This would indeed be more intriguing to me as an advertiser since my commercial will be a good 20 - 30% louder than the show I'm sponsoring. Furthermore the explanation to the FCC would continue to be true and everyone would be happy. Well, almost everybody. Of course, Comedy Central is not the only Station that has shows which are mixed incredibly low.

Technology exists that limits the peaks in audio but there are 2 problems with this.

1. People should not have to buy extra equipment to keep the audio from their Home Theater at comfortable levels.
2. By limiting peaks in audio there is always the possibility that the audio of the Television Shows we watch can be adversely effected by technology.

Hopefully this bill doesn't slip away. I, for one am tired of having unwanted noise in my home. I feel a letter to my Congressman coming on.