In an effort to cut down on noise pollution from suddenly blaring advertisements on, say, Netflix or Disney+, California legislators have passed a law to mandate that the noise level of commercials is at the same level as the movie or TV series being streamed.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, SB 576, that had been shepherded by Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana) through the legislative process. It had passed unanimously on the Senate and Assembly floor earlier this month in Sacramento.
The passage means that, starting on July 1 of next year, major streaming services won’t be able to “transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany,” the bill’s text reads.
The law asks streaming services to follow the Federal Communications Commission’s Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which went in to effect in 2012 for linear TV and radio but does not currently apply to streamers. That effort was spurred by the FCC receiving more than 130,000 complaints in 2010, “the vast majority of which concerned the excessively loud sound of commercials,” the state’s Assembly analysis recounted.
“Many platforms have introduced tiered subscription models that require consumers to pay a premium to avoid commercials, bringing ad-supported viewing, and the loudness of those ads, back into focus for millions of users,” the Assembly briefing noted. Indeed, price hikes across the board from streaming services have by default pushed consumers to the cheaper options, which now include regular commercial breaks just like old school TV.
A bill analysis by Senate legislature committee staff noted that the Motion Picture Association, which lobbies on behalf of Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery, had voiced opposition to the effort.
“The Motion Picture Association says that since streaming services are working voluntarily to address the issue of loud advertisements, SB 576 is unnecessary,” the analysis read. “They note that many streaming services have undertaken reasonable efforts to adjust the loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs.”
Newsom, on signing the bill on Oct. 6, touted its volume-lowering impact, saying, “We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program.”
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