hold the phones, congress did something i agree with

[John Coloccia]

Or the station can spend $100 on a compressor/limiter and turn it on during commercials. If the commercial is mixed too hot, it will not sound good. Too bad for the product. Next time, they'll mix it better.

[Joe Chritz]

Better yet. If you don't like how the commercials are on a station then watch a different one. Problem solved.

Trying to legislate every "problem" is a bad idea which is already in full swing.

Joe

[Dan Hintz]

I DVR almost everything and skip the commercials... problem solved.

[Neal Clayton]

Or the station can spend $100 on a compressor/limiter and turn it on during commercials. If the commercial is mixed too hot, it will not sound good. Too bad for the product. Next time, they'll mix it better.

actually it looks like you can get one for 76 dollars from amazon.

if someone had time/money to burn they could buy say...a truckload of the marketing pamphlets for that 76 dollar compressor and deliver all of them to that lobbying firm.

Jim brings up a valid point, and even with the new legislation, it's going to be difficult. Since commercials and shows are never recorded by the same people, the recording levels can be all over the place... that leaves it up to the audio engineer at the stations to do the final mix-down, and there lies the rub.

Plain speech typically needs to be turned up so we can hear/understand it, but add in some music and suddenly it doesn't need to be as loud or it drowns out the speech. So imagine watching a drama that goes to commercial, and the commercial starts with a rock song (iPod commercial, sports car, etc.). The audio engineer has to dynamically tune the sound levels... too little and you get blown away, too much and you get artifacting in the audio and it sounds like crap. It's a fine line...

all of which they've been doing ever since the first radio broadcast decades ago. it's not really a new thing.

[Greg Cuetara]

actually I believe that some regulations like this already exist. The problem is that if you really pay attention to the shows there will be gun fire or really loud music right before the commercial starts which then allows the commercial to be much louder than the typical volume of the shows. One big problem I have is that I can hardly hear when people are talking but then there is a little action and it gets way too loud. LOML spends too much time with the remote changing the volume so that we don't wake up the kiddo.

[Mike Wilkins]

This is great. Our government just spent millions of our tax dollars to come up with something you and I could just do with our remote controls: use the volume control.

[Phil Thien]

That is a great idea. But let me see 'em do something about this. That's right, posts in all caps.

I suppose enforement would be probematic.

[LOL. I tried posting the above in all caps. The system automatically decapified it. I guess a higher authority than the gov't is already at work... Keith Outten.]

[Greg Peterson]

I watch the science channel in the morning during my breakfast. When the commercials come on, the commercial volume is easily twice that of the program. I have to hurry and turn the volume down or mute it. Then there are the commercials that start out loud and get louder.

If they know how to make their commercials loud and obnoxious, they know how to not do this.

Simple compliance test is if I have to turn down the commercial, they are out of compliance.

[Bryan Morgan]

With all the streaming technology out there you guys still watch TV with commercials?

[Mike Sheppard]

They did something I like also, they went home.
Mike

[paul cottingham]

Mythtv actually cuts commercials out of recordings.