Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Where's The Remote?

The CALM (or Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) Act is making its way through the House of Representatives. If it, through some massive Congressional brain fart (yes, yes, I know - they happen all the time), becomes law, it would make it illegal to run commercials at a significantly higher volume than the show during which they run.

Okay. I understand the idea. I find 120 decibel commercials for ProActive to be annoying, too. But this is what they invented the "Mute" button for. Between that, and deciding that anyone who needs to shout doesn't have a product worth buying, I'm pretty sure that we could nip this in the bud without passing yet another law.

Besides, it's not like we're going to see any advertising executives doing a perp walk to a federal courthouse over this (which, I must admit, would make it all worthwhile).

1 comment:

Isonomist said...

If I'm trying to fall asleep with the tv on I sure don't want to have to wake up enough to mute the commercials, but I doubt Congress can come up with a law that ad agencies can't find a way to circumvent.

In NY we see ads for these:http://www.tvsoundregulator.com/ -- I wonder if they're lobbying against the bill for the damage it does to small business (theirs).