The sound of good government
Do you hear that?
Just listen. Closely.
Hear it?
Yes, that’s what you’re hearing: the glorious sound of television commercials at the same volume as the show you were watching.
That’s because, as of yesterday, the days of your television shaking itself off the wall from obscenely loud commercial breaks are gone. (Geez, how is Dennis Leary going to sell us trucks if his voice isn’t rattling our bones?)
This bold new, peaceful era of television-based capitalism is the result of the CALM Act, which went into effect Thursday and limits the volume of television commercials.
Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the legislation with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had something of a victory lap on Thursday (albeit, a respectfully quiet one), holding a press conference with industry types to tout the impact of the new regulation.
“Earsplitting television ads have jolted and annoyed viewers for decades,” Eshoo said. “With this new law, loud TV commercials that make consumers run for the mute button or change the channel altogether will be a thing of the past.”
Three cheers for progress — er, I mean, three cheers of moderate volume for progress!
Of course, all is not good news. Just to prove Congress can’t do anything without being annoying, CALM stands for “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation” because apparently you have to name every stinking bit of legislation with a cloyingly specific acronym these days.
(May I suggest someone sponsor the NOMORE Act? The Act, which would ban all acronyms for legislation, stands for “No Overtly Moronic Obsession Regarding Epithets ” Act.)
Naming aside, undoubtedly someone somewhere will fuss over the fact that Congress is telling broadcast, cable, satellite and other video providers what to do. This would require a bit of mental acrobatics, however, as the industry is alright with this new bill, and the CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters both praised it during the press conference.
After all, when you think about it, this is something that we should all be able to get behind.
Even if you’re stridently in the Norquistian camp seeking to drown the federal government in the bathtub, you’ve got to admit not having “OH EM GEE CASH FOR GOLD!” blare from your television’s speakers after a particularly poignant scene of “Duck Dynasty” is a good thing.
Because if there’s one thing that unites us all, it’s that, next to telemarketers calling during dinner, there is no more universal first-world problem than needing to have the volume high enough to hear quiet dialogue on a show only to have your fillings rattled when the commercial comes on for Papa Johns.
Hyperbole aside, it’s enough of a problem that people have been asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do something about it for about as long as television has been around.
“Loud TV commercials have been among the most common consumer complaints to the FCC for decades now,” said Whitehouse. “While this is a small issue compared to the big challenges facing our nation, it is an unnecessary annoyance in the daily lives of many Americans, and I’m glad to have done something about it.”
(Come on, Whitehouse, you couldn’t have just stopped after the word “Americans” and managed to not break your arm patting your own back?)
This new legislation is definitely a step up from the previous official FCC policy on overly loud commercials: that offended consumers hit the mute button. (In a similar vein, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is encouraging all those who are unemployed to simply get a job.)
And, who knows, maybe now that commercials can’t simply get your attention by being gratingly loud, they might just have to — oh, I don’t know — be good enough to get our attention.
A guy can dream, I guess.
If you’d like his help to find your missing remote, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.