Broadcasters promise plan to quiet TV ads by September

[bananas]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/washington/story/69922.html
* Posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009

Broadcasters promise plan to quiet TV ads by September
By Carrie Wells | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers stepped aside Thursday and agreed to let broadcasters come up with a system for toning down loud TV ads.

However, they warned that if the broadcasters didn't tone down their act, they'd reintroduce a bill next year to make the Federal Communications Commission turn down the volume on loud commercials.

Industry leaders said they'd reach an agreement by September on what David Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum Service Television, called "recommended practice" for the sound levels of shows and ads.

"We get it," Donovan said of the loud ad complaints. "As a matter of pure economics, we do not want to lose viewers."

<snip>

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/69822.html
* Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Here's some good news: Loud TV ads may be near an end
By Carrie Wells | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Congress soon might mute screaming TV-ad announcers who press viewers to "buy now!" — if broadcasters don't beat the lawmakers to the volume button.

Under a proposal to be taken up Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission would squelch ad volumes to the average decibels of the TV show during which they appear.

Currently, TV ads can't be louder than the loudest peak in a show, said David Perry, the chairman of the broadcast production committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in New York. Ads often seem louder to viewers, he added, because a program's volume peak rarely comes just before an ad.

"Every time the ads came on they blew me out of my seat," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who introduced the bill last June. "It really turns you off, makes you think, 'I'll be damned if I give them any of my money.' "

<snip>

"People practically throw their arms around me when they hear about it," she said.

<snip>

[depakid]

1. Just pass the bill

Never fails to impress how Congress knows what to do to solve the problem, but FAILS to act.

[Xipe Totec]

2. No, Donovan, does not get it.

Which is why his carcass had to be dragged to Washington to answer for it.

What's wrong with passing the legislation now? Why wait another year, if they're planning to comply anyway?

Or is it just that they want more time to figure out how to weasel out, or hope that we forget?

[ejpoeta]

4. more like hope we forget. we'll be busy with other stuff, and then in

a few years someone will want to do something about it again, and they'll ask for time to do it on their own... and the cycle continues.

[ejpoeta]

3. fuck that!! they could have done it on their own but didn't. just pass the damned law.

i am so sick of the commercials being five times louder than the show. i swear i could go deaf from them!! Why must they keep doing this. Just pass the damned law. They say if you don't fix it we'll bring the bill back in, and then the cycle will start all over. it's ridiculous!

[hvn_nbr_2]

5. The magical invisible hand of self-regulation will save us.

Yeah, right. If it were going to save us, it would have turned down the volume already.

Funny how self-regulation is a panacea for megacorporations but not for anybody else.

Funny how they never think that self-regulation will work for anyone else, but it has such incredibly powerful, magical, beneficial powers to make corporate fatcats do the right thing.

Funny how they never want to de-regulate private life that is none of the government's business and doesn't affect anyone else. But megacorporations that rob us blind and destroy the world can certainly be trusted to do the right thing.

[Touchdown]

6. What would Billy Mays do now?

I'm yelling because I'm trying to sell you something!