The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

TV fans, you're about to get a break from your commercial break.

Shouting TV ads are soon to become a thing of the past as a new law goes into effect Thursday at midnight mandating that the volume of commercials has to be within a range of 2 decibels (db) more or less than the programming around them.

Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for Hearst Television, was in charge of figuring out the right technology to make 31 transmitters compliant with the new regulations. He told TODAY that 2 db was "the difference between viewers reaching for the remote and not." TV stations want to encourage watchers to leave the remote alone, he said, "because right next to the volume button is the channel button."

Commercials are often so loud because the only real limit on programming volumes is the one set by stations so that the sound levels don't damage their equipment. That level, however, represents a peak sound meant to accommodate for when something like a gunshot or explosion goes off during a show. Advertising content creators routinely crank the sound of their ads to just shy of that peak level, so the entire commercial is playing at the equivalent of a 30-second bomb blast.

Joel Kelsey, legislative director for the media advocacy group Free Press, previously testified in Congress about the need for volume regulation on commercials. Since nearly the beginning of television itself, 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," Kelsey told TODAY.

However, it took an act of Congress, the "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act," or CALM Act, to prod the FCC into the necessary action. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate.

While station operators across the country have been busy implementing new volume-limiting controls, many viewers already have technology in their TV sets to dampen the auditory enthusiasm of "Crazy Carl's Car Shack" and "Head-On, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!"

It's worth mentioning what tools consumers have at their hands, besides the mute button, because with so many moving pieces involved, you can be sure that some loud ads will get through. The FCC encourages viewers to report any rogue ads to 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-225-5322).

Ahh... TV commercials to get quieter starting Thursday
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/12/12/15866886-ahh-tv-commercials-to-get-quieter-starting-thursday (http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/12/12/15866886-ahh-tv-commercials-to-get-quieter-starting-thursday)

Dont hold your breath.

It's a question of dynamic range (or the difference between the slightest detectable sounds and the loudest possible sounds).

A typical movie or television show tries to use as much dynamic range as the technology will allow, while on the other hand, commercials tend to shrink the dynamic range to where it's maxed out all the time.  The culprit is audio compression, where there's just no "low end" to the sound.

The audio we detect most reliably is 300 Hz to about 3 KHz.  That's the normal bandwidth for telephones and speech.

I wish the makers of some digital telephones at a place I worked in the late 80s had known that.  I was told the sampling was insufficient.  Whatever it was, most female voices were unintelligible due to missing sounds.  Tho e p ones w re ter ibl .  (Those phones were terrible.)

A friend has a smart phone that seems to have a mic that is sensitive to different frequencies when held at different angles.  If he shifts it slightly while talking, the upper frequencies drop out, leaving only the lower end.  It sounds like he's talking from inside a washing machine.

It doesn't help that my own hearing is deteriorating from too many loud noises, primarily motorcycles and guns.

I don't hear the high frequency from CRT TV's anymore. (When you can find one.)  It used to be quite prominent in Department Stores when I was a lot younger.