Finally! TV Commercials to Get Quieter

Say goodbye to those obnoxiously loud television commercials! Starting Thursday at midnight, commercials will legally have be within two decibels of the programming during which they air.

According to Today, 2 db isn't just a random number. Joe Addalia, Hearst Televison's director of technology projects, provided research that suggests that anything louder than 2 decibels is "the difference between viewers reaching for the remote and not."

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Though there have always been volume limits on programming set by stations, the upper limit was set to accommodate peak sounds such as a gunshot.  Before the implementation of the new law, called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), advertisers tended to air entire commercials at the peak level.

Joel Kelsey, legislative director for Free Press, explained the need for the CALM Act, stating that loud commercials "have consistently been one of the issues consumers are most energized to write the FCC about. They don't like being screamed at every time the program breaks to buy deodorant."

Are you excited about quieter commercials?