What is with these loud commercials?
I know I can’t be the only one who gets a burst of noise at every ad break.
I have to see if I’m going crazy or if they really are louder.
Surprise surprise, I’m not the only one who wants to put a stop to this noise.
We watched a lot of TV in 2020, with plenty of those loud commercials.
In fact, the Federal Communications Commission saw a 140% increase in loudness complaints.
But in theory, we solved this problem ten years ago!
In 2009, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo was having a nice family dinner when aoud commercial
blasted from the TV.
Eshoo tells her brother-in-law to turn down the volume, and he says, "Well, you're the
congresswoman.
Why don't you do something about it?"
She did just that, taking it to Congress with the CALM Act of 2012.
Overwhelmed by the bill’s popularity, Eshoo told the Wall Street Journal:
"If I'd saved 50 million children from some malady, people would not have the interest
that they have in this."
I decided to hit mute during the ad break and find out why loud commercials are still
very much alive, who’s responsible and what I can do to please, please make it stop.
But I learned pretty quick, as usual, it’s not all that simple.
The streaming platforms have made sure of that.
The first television commercial came in 1941 to 4,000 TVs.
By 1955, TV advertising had ballooned to a $1b industry.
As television’s popularity spread across America, more advertisers threw their hats
in the ring, looking for any opportunity to stand out - using music, color, animation
- and, of course, volume.
Something that would become particularly useful is a tool called dynamic range compression.
In a song or a recording, the difference between the loudest and the quietest sounds – we'll
call the dynamic range of it – has to be within a certain range or one of them's gonna
be compromised.
The way that you handle that is usually by reducing the loudest sounds.
So if you imagine a room, a little tiny room, with a very short ceiling.
And you wanna get a bunch of people in that room, some of the people who are too tall
will have to crouch down to fit inside.
As early as the 1940s, studio engineers were using dynamic range compression to balance
the overall sound levels of a track for songs and movies…
But mostly just for the listeners’ enjoyment.
Another reason you would use dynamic range compression might be to bring up the average
volume.
In media, we're competing for people's attention and... loud sounds... get more attention.
With the switch to CDs, engineers had so many more options for sound mixing.
More dynamic range, but more effective compression too.
I’m a musician, so I use compression a lot in my songs.
Here’s a song that I’ve been working on that doesn’t have any compression on it.
Now here’s the same song with compression added.
So, when I add compression, all the quiet sounds and the louder sounds are meeting at
a similar point.
The variety in dynamics just turns into a nice balanced mix.
It was only a matter of time before advertisers jumped in to make use of this tool themselves.
So, what does all of this mean?
Well, a lot of ads technically aren’t louder at all, they’re just at a more consistent
sound level, making it seem louder.
The ups and downs in the sound level of our shows sound naturally softer to our ears next
to the non-stop noise of a compressed commercial.
But why would advertisers subject us to this madness?
Turns out we’re able to hear 20 to 100 times faster than we see, meaning what we hear affects
all our other senses.
Basically, it’s our ears that notice ads first, not our eyes.
The human ear can perceive sound ranging in frequency from a low of 20 to a high of 20,000
cycles or vibrations per second.
So while the sound of a TV show or movie might be designed to bring us through a story with
ups and downs and rises and falls in tension, ads have a different method.
Commercials are designed to hit our innate attention response trigger, whether you’re
falling asleep or sitting down for dinner.
Which brings me back to Congresswoman Eshoo and The CALM Act.
The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act set a new volume standard for TV advertisers,
something called A/85.
Put simply, A/85 stated that the average loudness of a commercial had to be roughly as loud
as the average loudness of the programming between it.
And they measure average loudness over time using LUFS.
Loudness Units Full Scale.
​​Our perception of sound is complicated and average volume doesn't tell the whole
story.
There's sort of a frequency-dependent nature of it.
So LUFS are an attempt to compensate for the way our ear perceives loudness.
So while Spotify and YouTube have set their own sound to around -14 LUFS, A/85 recommends
-24 LUFS for TV.
Say you’re watching Vikings and you’re hearing a variety of ups and downs in volume:
Ragnar speaking quietly at the low level of about -24 LUFS with the odd village raid bringing
the levels up.
At an ad break, A/85 is designed to ensure that you’re not blasted with the village-raid-level
volume right out of the gate.
The bill passed in 2010 and officially took effect in late 2012.
But here we are, still sitting through these noisy ads.
While the FCC doesn’t actively enforce the measures, it works instead from complaints
submitted by the public.
And they got their fair share from 2012 to 2019, when almost 50,000 viewers complained
to the FCC about loud commercials.
So what happened with all those complaints?
Well, the FCC will only make an investigation if the complaints they receive form some kind
of pattern, of which they’ve found… none.
On top of this, there are a few ways advertisers could stay ahead of the CALM Act:
In a 30 second commercial, advertisers might include 15 seconds of just silence or low-level
sound.
But then in those other 15 seconds, everything is twice as loud.
So technically, this loophole does keep them within legal bounds.
Which means lots of noise, no laws broken.
The FCC caught wind of this in 2014 and updated the fine print to remove silent or very quiet
moments from a commercial’s loudness average to avoid it.
Starting the commercial at a lower volume before gradually increasing it throughout
will do the trick.
Again, same concept.
Legal noise level achieved.
And most notably: the CALM Act only covers television, wire, and satellite.
It doesn’t have jurisdiction over any streaming services, which, in case you missed it, are
rapidly taking over how we consume content.
In late 2014, some companies like Pluto TV asked to be included in the CALM Act, gaining
the attention of then FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who made a push to redefine the law to include
all streaming services.
It didn’t go far, with the larger streaming companies like Amazon refusing outright.
Without the majority of commissioner votes to pass it, and after Tom Wheeler was replaced
as chairman by Ajit Pai, a no-voter, the proposal died.
And even if the FCC were to just change the definition of the CALM Act to include streaming
platforms, it’s bound to land them an unwinnable lawsuit.
It would mean expanding the organization’s federal power over a lot of private companies
without going through Congress.
With the FCC’s hands tied, Congress would have to pass a new law.
A decade after the CALM Act, Congresswoman Eshoo is looking for a solution with the help
of the Audio Engineering Society.
The society is a group of audio production experts determining industry standards.
Right now, they’re working on a new one: AES71.
This new standard provides audio mixing guidelines recommended specifically for streaming platforms.
It could bring an end to the unreasonable ad break loudness for good.
And with enough support from Congress, another bill could reach the president’s desk in
the near future...
While some streaming platforms are just content with the way things are, there are others
who are leading by example.
Like Netflix, the one without ads!
After reviewing their sound levels, they found the standards of their shows and movies were
causing the dialogue to be much lower than the average volume.
Netflix began using the dialogue volume as a base or an anchor for the overall loudness
rather than all the action and explosions.
If we do the same for commercials, it could solve the loudness problem entirely.
No more turning it up for the dialogue.
And it’s not just Netflix that’s paying extra attention to the viewer experience.
After a drop in ratings, NBC reduced its ad minutes as other companies keep pushing for
more.
Now NBC’s ratings are rising, potentially starting a trend of ‘less is more’ for
the future.
This is Frogger.
Look, I don’t know when loud commercials will stop blaring noise at us, compressed
or not, whether by preference or by law.
But for now, there’s always the mute button.