WASHINGTON—In the run-up to its Feb. 27th Open Meeting, the Federal Communications Commission has issued further details on its plans to possibly update CALM Act rules that prohibit overly loud commercials.
As part of those plans, the FCC Media Bureau has opened MB Docket No. 25-72, which is captioned “Updates to the Commission’s Rules Implementing the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act.”
It also released a document on Feb. 6 that has been circulated to the FCC commissioners for tentative consideration prior to its February 27, 2025 open meeting. The proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which will be voted on by the commissioners during the meeting, calls for public input on whether the FCC should updating CALM act rules.
The FCC stressed that the issues referenced in this document and the Commission’s ultimate resolutions of those issues remain under consideration and that the document does not constitute any official action by the Commission, the FCC reported.
In a blog post announcing the agenda for the February Open Meeting on Feb. 5 Carr said the agency will revisit the CALM Act, which was passed by Congress 15 years ago to require broadcasters to work with MVPDs to reduce the volume on TV commercials.
“Loud TV commercials are a frustrating headache,” Carr wrote. “You’re sitting there, chilling out, and then BOOM some commercial breaks in at a high volume. I don’t like them, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. In fact, the FCC has recently seen an uptick in consumer complaints about excessively loud commercials.
“Back in 2010, Congress passed a law to address this issue, but given the rise in complaints I think now is the time for the FCC to revisit the issue,” he added. “Accordingly, we will consider a notice of proposed rulemaking to see if there are additional actions the Commission could take today to make sure TV viewers aren’t inundated by exceedingly loud commercials.”
In the proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking the FCC noted that “in the years immediately following [the adoption of rules implementing the CALM act], consumer complaints dropped significantly, indicating real efforts on the part of industry to bring their stations or systems into compliance. Nevertheless, in recent years, the Commission has received thousands of complaints from viewers who remain frustrated by the loudness of television commercials. This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking asks viewers and television industry participants whether there are additional actions the Commission could take today that would support the purposes of the CALM Act.”
The FCC said the proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would: “seek feedback from stakeholders about whether the Commission’s CALM Act rules and practices are effectively serving their intended purpose and on specific areas in which commenters believe updates are needed given improvements in technology or new industry practices.”
In addition it would “seek comment on possible actions the Commission, industry, or standard developers could take to further minimize the problem...Invite consumers to tell us their experiences regarding the loudness of commercials as they watch programming provided by television broadcasters and MVPDs [and] consider if changes are needed to the consumer complaint process.”
