Say goodbye to loud commercials and say hello to the person next to you on the couch.
Stopping loud commercials is a great idea, but how do you do it and how do you enforce it? Who will take the blame when an overly-loud commercial does air? Well, the FCC has put this responsibility in the hands of video service providers (cable operators, satellite TV providers, telcos, over-the-air TV broadcasters), who will be fined when ear-splitting commercials air.
What you need to know as a TV viewer is that these loud commercials won’t necessarily stop right away; VSPs have until December 2012 to comply with the CALM Act. As a consumer you undoubtedly heard about the lengthy legal process behind the CALM Act, but what about the impact on VSPs? It turns out that for VSPs to even be able to tone down loud commercials they first have to identify them and to this new monitoring equipment had to be invented. Well if all the VSPs have to do is purchase this new equipment, why all the fuss?
Well, quite simply not every VSP is a giant conglomerate with deep pockets, some are smaller – even ma’ and pa’ sized companies – without cash to burn. The FCC is not ignoring this issue; it has noted that if the VSP can show that its business will face a financial hardship in order to comply with the CALM Act, the VSP can get a one year extension to come into compliance. If you are interested in reading some more about the CALM Act, ABC published a good over-arching article and while a few days old Communications Technology has a good piece on the impacts of the CALM Act on the cable industry.
