The California State Legislature has passed a new law that extends federal TV-commercial volume rules to cover streaming.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 576 by Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana) to turn down the volume of commercials that rise to a level louder than the primary video content being watched.

When Congress passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act in 2010, the law only applied to broadcast television stations and cable operators. Gov. Newsom noted that the state’s new rules extend those limits now to streaming services, which have skyrocketed in popularity over the past decade.

“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said. “By signing SB 576, California is dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms, which had previously not been subject to commercial volume regulations passed by Congress in 2010.”

“This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work,” said bill sponsor Umberg. “SB 576 brings some much-needed peace and quiet to California households by making sure streaming ads aren’t louder than the shows we actually want to watch.”

Even though many critics say the current laws on the books are not being adequately enforced, opponents argued that the new rules will be even harder to enforce.

“Unlike in the broadcasting [and] cable network environment, where advertisers sell their ads directly to the networks, streaming ads come from several different sources and cannot necessarily or practically be controlled by streaming platforms,” Melissa Patack, the MPA’s vice president of state government affairs, testified last summer.

Earlier this year, the FCC issued a Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM), seeking public input on the effectiveness of the current rules. That NPRM acknowledged streaming but did not suggest that the rules be extended. Closing date for public comments was in May, the FCC has not taken any more action since.

The law, which covers television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors in addition to streaming services, was so simply written that we feel comfortable publishing it verbatim:

“Existing law regulates various businesses to, among other things, preserve and regulate competition, prohibit unfair trade practices, and regulate advertising.

“Existing federal law requires the Federal Communications Commission to develop regulations that require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany. The federal regulations apply to television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors.

“This bill would prohibit, on and after July 1, 2026, a video streaming service, as defined, that serves consumers in the state from transmitting the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany, as specified. The bill would state that it does not create a private right of action.”

Costa Nikols, executive team strategy adviser, Media & Entertainment, for Telos Alliance, said that since the passage of the federal CALM Act, television has drastically changed to on-demand and OTT platforms where audio levels for commercials remain unregulated.

“California’s new streaming regulations mark an important first step toward improving the viewer experience,” Nikols said. “The industry now has an opportunity to apply the same discipline to streaming audio that transformed broadcast. Audio processing that can help broadcasters with streaming content loudness levels will be in increased focus as companies push to maintain dialogue intelligibility and quality. We saw it before with broadcast—the right technology is already in place, so the industry should feel ready to do it again.”

ASHLAND, ORE.—Back in the day of three television networks, analog NTSC, and epic westerns, radio stations engaged in endless loudness wars, but television stations strove to match their audio loudness with other stations in the market.

Those were the days! Commercial producers, of course, tried to make their commercials as loud as they could get away with. This was a constant battle, with the commercial producers maintaining that their product did not deflect the vu meter any higher than program audio.

We knew, of course, that although that was true, loudness could be increased through using audio compression to increase the average audio level, while keeping the peak level legal. So the vu meter did not go too high, but it dwelt near the peg. From the network side, there was constant effort to keep commercials from being offensively loud.

ONE MORE DB

As we moved into the digital age, this battle continued, but now the program producers also wanted to push audio levels to the limit. As the person who wrote and maintained the high-def program delivery spec for a major broadcast network, I engaged in many conversations with program producers about the audio levels on their programs. I remember one producer insisting passionately that they really, really needed that extra one dB that got their show rejected.

The digital television era also brought us 5.1 channel sound to accompany HD, and I recall one energy water commercial that pegged the peak meter of every audio channel, including the surrounds and the subwoofer, aka Low Frequency Effects. Meanwhile, another network went for maximum loudness as an objective, a practice that continues to this day.

The loud commercials situation produced the Commercial Announcement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, a law with a clever title. Let me quote the opening paragraph of the FCC’s web page on the Act:

Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) rules require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany. In the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, Congress directed the FCC to establish these rules, which went into effect on December 13, 2012.

As a loudness reference, the FCC mandated use of ATSC A/85, “ATSC Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television.” From what may be determined from the ATSC website, A/85:2013 appears to be the current version of this Recommended Practice. It specifies the use of AC-3 tools such as Dialnorm and Dynrng , and also use of the loudness measurement algorithm contained in ITU BS.1770, updated in 2013 to BS-1770-3, which included a better loudness algorithm than BS.1770. In fact, BS.1770 is currently up to BS.1770-4, published in 2015, but it does not appear that the ATSC documentation has caught up. 

[Read: CALM Act Facts Revealed]

Parenthetically, your author worked on some of the early stages of the development of BS.1770, as did many audio experts. A number of algorithms were considered, going back as far as the algorithm used in the CBS Loudness Meter devised in the 1960s, and it is accurate to say that, while the CBS loudness algorithm was indeed better than some of the more recently devised ones, the algorithms used to measure perceived loudness have seen real improvement in recent years. The FCC regulations apply to broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, but not to internet. Sounds good, right? Or does it?

IN THE REAL WORLD

For a while now, I have been out of the loop, a pure viewer, and my observations have been that these regulations are frequently honored in the breach. Particularly in the cable world, audio loudness levels vary dramatically between channels, which is not, in itself, a violation; but it is distracting to the viewer, many of whom switch among channels.

In the AC-3 world, the honest, reasonable application of Dialnorm should render this a non-problem. On the broadcast side, there is, at least, consistency in the average loudness level of programming, element-to-element, as the broadcast networks take pains to assure it. The commercials, however, are a different story. Sometimes, the levels vary commercial-to-commercial, with some commercials being softer than the program material, and some louder.

There is one broadcast network whose commercials and network promos are consistently louder than their program material. I have confirmed this by noting it in a large market and a smaller market. And because I now live in market #138, the local commercials inserted into the pods are notably worse than the network commercials, on all network affiliates. This is partially because this market would seem to be where all the 1960’s screaming puker DJs ended up, now doing local commercial voice overs. A number of the locally produced commercials are not just loud, they are totally obnoxious. There are of course some very well-produced local commercials as well. Some.

Cable is frequently worse than broadcast for loud commercials and uneven commercial loudness. The worst, of course, is commercially-supported online TV. It appears that the commercials are typically inserted from different servers from the one that runs the programming, and possibly from multiple servers during a single commercial pod. The non-commercial streaming services with which I am familiar do a nice job of maintaining even program loudness. The commercially-supported services, i.e., the online streaming services of the broadcast and cable networks, are still on a steep learning curve with regard to relative loudness between program and commercial elements.”

To sum up, it appears that in 2018, the CALM Act is about as helpful to the consumer as the Do Not Call List.