It's about time! TV commercials re to be quieter, starting this Thursday at midnight, commercials will legally have to be within two decibels of the programming during which they air. HALELU-YEAHHHHH. Oh, wait, at what point of the programming are we measuring from? Because I tend to watch a lot of action films where the dialogue is practically whispered and the they nuke the Large Hadron Collider or something with an extremely loud BOUHM and anything two decibels above that will likely shatter my windows.
Oh goodie, TV guide has an answer to my query.
Though there have always been volume limits on programming set by stations, the upper limit was set to accommodate peak sounds such as a gunshot. Before the implementation of the new law, called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), advertisers tended to air entire commercials at the peak level.
Joel Kelsey, legislative director for Free Press, explained the need for the CALM Act, stating that loud commercials "have consistently been one of the issues consumers are most energized to write the FCC about. They don't like being screamed at every time the program breaks to buy deodorant."
Anyone want to hang with me watching Doomsday really loud or whatever else is on, come Friday?