Bipartisan members of Congress and the White House have agreed – commercials on television can be too loud in comparison to the programming in which they are embedded, and via the CALM Act, they have instructed the FCC to do something about it. At the next Open Meeting, the FCC will do something.
The meeting will be held Tuesday 12/13/11 at 10:45 eastern.
The specific agenda plank is called “Implementation of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act (MB Docket No. 11-93).” The FCC describes it, saying, “The Commission will consider a Report and Order that protects consumers by implementing the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to prevent digital television commercial advertisements from being transmitted at louder volumes than the program material they accompany.”
The only other agenda item is “Third Report and Analysis of Competitive Market Conditions with Respect to Domestic and International Satellite Communications Services.”
RBR-TVBR observation: We have heard the effectiveness of CALM questioned, since program decibel levels accommodate pitched battles, meaning loud ads will still seem to blare out when surrounded by conversational program loudness levels. Guess we’ll find out before too long.
