The Aflac duck will have put a sock in it now.
A new government rule banning loud TV commercials went into effect yesterday.
Under the aptly named Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation or CALM Act, commercials must have the same average volume as the programs they accompany.
Loud TV ads are a longtime leading gripe of viewers, whose calls to the Federal Communications Commission have made it the No. 1 reported grievance every year since 2002, when the commission began keeping track.
“Earsplitting television ads have jolted and annoyed viewers for decades,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo D-Calif., who wrote the law. “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.”
Even advertising companies admitted it was a problem.
“The purpose of advertising is to try and persuade people, and if you’re trying to persuade people, it’s probably not a good idea to start out by annoying them,” said Dick O’Brien, executive vice president of government relations at the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
“The advertisers who might have been jiggling with the volume to try and get attention tended to be more local, mom-and-pop operations, not blue-chip advertisers,” he said.
The law was passed by Congress in 2010, but it was up to the FCC to figure out how to define what’s too loud.
The rules — which will cover TV stations, cable and satellite operators — is highly technical because sound is so subjective, one official said, leading many to believe that violations will likely be based mostly on the number of complaints listeners file.
The regulations don’t apply to online commercials.