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Topic: Obama signed the CALM act -- no more loud commercials
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-07-2011 12:01 PM
....or so they say. This from the CBS website:
quote:
TV viewers, rejoice: You'll no longer get blown out of your seat by the difference in volume between the television program you're watching and the commercials that air during it.
On Wednesday President Obama signed into law the "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation" or "CALM Act." A press release from the White House states the law "requires the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials transmitted by television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors."
The House passed the bill by a voice vote on Dec. 2. It was passed the Senate unanimously in September. The FCC will start enforcing the new rules within a year.
Consumers have complained to the FCC about loud commercials for decades, and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) told the Wall Street Journal in December that the CALM Act is the most popular piece of legislation she's sponsored in her 18 years in Congress. "If I'd saved 50 million children from some malady, people would not have the interest that they have in this," she said.
For now, the FCC has a webpage on the subject, which advises consumers, "Manually controlling volume levels with the remote control remains the simplest approach to reducing excessive volume levels."
I just wonder how does this discrepancy originate in the first place. It is nowhere near that bad on broadcast TV, only cable seems to have the affliction. I contend that this is no accident; those super loud commercials are made loud because someone somewhere is doing it on PURPOSE. My cynical mind is thinking it could be as sinister as broadcasters and cable operators getting paid under the table to purposely boost commercial volume. You don't pay, your commercial gets the same level as the program. You slip us a couple a smooth 10Gs for every 2db we boost and you get your ad that much hotter than the program audio.
I mean, we used to have reference levels - what happened to zero db? In audio every medium seems to have very uniform reference levels. When I was mastering programs for FM syndication, you never had to worry about LP levels, for example, being all over the map, and we spent serious alignment time making sure all our Ampex master recorders and dubbers all were aligned to Ampex reference. When we sent them out to the stations, tapes couldn't be have varying levels all over the place if we wanted to stay in business.
You can't tell me that when a commercial comes on twice as hot as the program that some deliberate effing around is being done. The guys in the control room can certainly hear that the commercial is blasting over the program level. And even if there is no one monitoring anything at all and it's all automated, then whatever happened to limiters and compressors and the even more sophisticated computer programs that can do every conceivable type of audio manipulation that the mind can conceive?
The SMPTE in NYC is holding this month's meeting specifically about the CALM Act. I will attend to see what they have to say, especially what the explanation is for why we are at this state of affairs to begin with because it wasn't always like this. Maybe all the CLAM Act needs to do is say, "Do whatever you were doing in 1980."
Now all we have to do is wait to see how they fix it and then whatever piece of equipment they come up with to smash down the commercial audio, we stick that in the projection booths for the damn trailers!
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-07-2011 09:47 PM
You are right, of course, there is more to it than just signal level. There is the "apparent" loudness that you perceive due to many factors, not the least of which is content such as what Joe points out -- cheesy music. There is always much more dynamic range in program material compared to the super compressed right-at-the-redline commercials, so if you have a commercial that starts with loud, compressed music -- I shall not name a genre, but let's just say the one that no one over 35 even considers music (or, gag me with a spoon, feakin "poetry" as I have heard it called) -- even if it is not over-modulated, it will still sound way hot to humans with ears. That's why humans with ears used to actually sit at audio consoles and ride level.
I would think that if there are not already black boxes out there that can process that apparent loudness issue, no doubt nowadays a computer program can be written that could be taught to understand what a human with ears understands as too loud. If it can't, well then I guess now there is a law that is going to make the broadcasters and cable operators hire such eared humans to help them comply.
I am itching to see how the law is written because it can't just say the commercials can't go over an average db level because then you're right back where we started with highly compressed obnoxious content being perceived as too loud even though it might keep the VU meter at a legal level.
I mean, let's face it -- the last movement of Beethoven's 9th is going to be right up at 0db and it will sound just awesome to us. Follow that by a rap tune (oooh, no, I didn't say that, did I?) and while that might even be 6db LOWER than the symphony, to you and me it would still sound much, MUCH too loud. But then again, I guess there's the blessed MUTE button, or like me, never EVER watch anything in real time so the FAST FORWARD button is always available, or the BEST thing for the wasteland that is TV is that equally laudable OFF switch!
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