SCOTTSDALE – Today is momentous in the history of television and Rose Law Group. After years-long crabbing about loud TV commercials, there’s no longer the need to dive for the mute button.
A new federal law aimed at lowering the volume of TV commercials goes into effect today.
“This is clearly not the biggest thing happening in Washington, but it is one less nuisance,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a sponsor of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM, Act, said at a Capitol Hill gathering to celebrate the law’s implementation.
“I’d like to thank the Gripe Editor of the Rose Law Group Reporter for not only calling for legislation for the maddening increase in volume for TV commercials, he also spent much time and treasure in the Nation’s Capital to push passage of the CALM Act.
Under the rule, commercials should have the same average volume as the programs they accompany. The Federal Communications Commission, which has called loud TV commercials “one of the most persistent problems of the television age,”’ said it will rely on consumer complaints to monitor industry compliance.
President Obama signed the measure nearly two years ago, but it took time for the FCC to draw up rules, and for industry groups to work through the technical issues and come into compliance.
The president at first was undecided on whether to sign the bill because he wanted his campaign commercials in the future to be heard loud and clear, but the Gripe Editor paid him a visit and turned him in favor of pulling out a pen and signing the law.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), who said she received more response to the legislation than anything she has sponsored in 20 years in Congress, came up with the idea after a loud commercial interrupted a family dinner.
After asking her brother-in-law to do something about the volume, Eshoo recalled, he turned to her and said, “Well, you’re the congresswoman. Why don’t you do something about it?.’’
“I never dreamed it would strike the chord that it did with the American people,’’ she said, “and I salute the [Gripe Editor’s] contribution.”
