You turn on your favorite show but can’t hear the dialogue. You turn the volume up. It’s perfect. Then, an ad comes on. It’s way too loud. You’re annoyed.
That’s about to become a thing of the past, at least in California. Starting on July 1, a state law will go into effect barring streaming platforms from servicing ads louder than the programming they accompany.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill last year forcing the normalization of audio levels so viewers aren’t jolted by blaring commercials.
Federal law already requires ads to match the average volume of the content being watched, though it only applies to TV broadcasters and cable operators. The legislation now mandates streaming platforms to do the same.
Democratic Sen. Tom Umberg said he decided to introduce the bill after his legislative director complained to him about how an obnoxiously loud ad woke his daughter when he was winding down by watching a show.
“This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work,” Umberg said in a statement last year. “SB 576 brings some much-needed peace and quiet to California households by making sure streaming ads aren’t louder than the shows we actually want to watch.”
He put it more bluntly in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “If they can find a way to boost the volume, they can find a way to not boost the volume.”
Added Newsom, “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.”
Not everyone’s happy. The Motion Picture Association and Streaming Innovation Alliance opposed the measure, arguing that many platforms are already working to address the issue. They noted that services have long been intervening to adjust the loudness of commercials that come from server-side ad insertion, and that they’re trying to establish best practices for normalizing the loudness of ads.
Next up, maybe lawmakers can do something about overly soft, mumbling dialogue preceded by deafening explosions.
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