There’s a reason people hold on to the remote during all of their favorite programs, and its not just to surf the channels when a commercial comes on. Often, it’s to lower the volume when that same commercial comes on.
How often does some laundry detergent commercial reach the screeching pitch of Adam Lambert in all his glory just as the Desperate Housewives are in the middle of a whispered confession? How often does a hushed confession on “Law and Order” get interrupted but a happy-go-lucky golfer shouting the virtues of Flomax? It’s enough to make you wet your pants.
The problem is that FCC has ruled that commercials can be played at the highest volume reached in the show itself. It’s annoying for everyone, but Rep. Anna Eshoo (D) of Palo Alto can actually do something about it. Based on what she described as her “cumulative aggravation,” she has introduced a new bill in Congress that would equalize the volume, and prevent broadcasters from raising the volume as soon as commercials come on.
In a sharply divided house, Eshoo believes that this could even be a bi-partisan bill. “I’ve never had so many members of Congress say thank you to me,” she says. She hopes to have the bill passed by Christmas, which means that all the corporate Santa’s “ho ho ho’s” could be a few decibels lower this year. For many TV fans this could be the greatest gift of all.
Read More at ABC Local.
ALRIGHT! I mean, alright. Finally, something that makes sense and doesn’t cost us anything.
WOW!!! Something upon which Ms. Eshoo and I can agree….at long last.
> “I’ve never had so many members of Congress say thank you to me,” she says.
GEE-ZUS-H-CRIPES!!!
We are in TWO wars! The unemployment rate is TEN POINT TWO PERCENT (seventeen plus percent, really), the car companies are bankrupt, the banks are bankrupt, the insurance companies are bankrupt, ACORN is stealing elections with government money, the U.N. is making up phony global warming numbers to scare the world into permanent, universal tax slavery, . . .
AND THESE CLOWNS ARE WORRYING ABOUT THE VOLUME OF TV COMMERCIALS???!!!!
Why is it that brain-damaged sociopaths always end up in Congress?
Not all of them are in Congress. Some of them end up blathering on this blog.
> Not all of them are in Congress. Some of them end up blathering on this blog.
Yet another Congressional staffer wasting time on the internet looking to shout down critics of his brain-damaged sociapathic boss.
Don’t say I never gave you anything. You can add it to your climate blog:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece
Thanks. It’s a keeper, even though my files are bulging with material of a similar vein.
> The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
> The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.
Would someone please remind me,. . . What are governments good for, anyway?
There are good governments and bad governments. You don’t seem to want to differentiate. Here is an example of a bad government at work:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1204/p06s07-woap.html
There have been quite a few of you conservative posters talking about leaving California, leaving the country etc…Just what is it you are looking for, other than more of your tax dollars back? Have you ever been to a truly lawless country?
I find it interesting how conservatives bash liberals for being “idealist” when they themselves have this grandiose vision of what life would be like without government. I don’t think it would be any better than a failed hippie commune. It might start off nice, but eventually the lower qualities of men would lead to jealousies, corruption and failure.
Seriously, I’m curious how you would envision this “new world”, and please spare me the “anything is better than what we have” stuff. I want to hear your vision of a world without government.
> I want to hear your vision of a world without government.
Your premise that I have a “vision of a world without government” is mistaken.
If you want a serious answer, ask a serious question.
If you wan a contentious answer, ask a contentious question.
You said it yourself; There are good governments and bad governments. What you didn’t say was that there are also governments that are everwhere between good and bad. I and other conservatives know our government isn’t on the extreme “bad” end of the scale, but we’d like to see it a lot closer to the “good” end.
We understand that the government that we do have is ultimately the result of the vote of the majority. We are trying- not very eloquently or diplomatically sometimes, I regret- to explain why we think they are mistaken in their vision of what sort of governance will lead to a happier, more prosperous and cohesive society.
I don’t understand how you can hear someone criticizing the government, and automatically categorize that critic as an anarchist.
Just who on this blog do you imagine, has a “vision of a world without government”?
When it comes to Eshoo, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Gezeundheit!
Now with that obligatory pun out of the way, it’s time to get down to business. This TV commercial volume legislation goes about 1/1,000,000,000,000th of the way towards making up for her destructive, freedom-killing, bankbreaking positions on scores of other issues.
So I won’t have to wear out my thumb on the TV remote. Whoop-dee.
This is just wonderful. Her party and president are presiding over a trillion dollar budget deficit with no relief in sight. Despite double-digit unemployment, Obama wants to subject the country to a jobs-killing cap & tax scheme based on questionable science and Eschoo is concerned about television commericals? This is why we need term limits in Congress.
There’s a fundamental concept here that most people seems to be missing, and unless people understand it this whole discussion is just a waste of time.
Commercials are not any louder than the program content, as judged by the peak level.
If you look at an audio waveform, you will see peaks and valleys. In a typical speech waveform, the highest peaks are few and far between. For example, if you listen to someone play guitar, the moment when the strings are hit is a peak, but the sustained sound of the string ringing is at a much lower level. Similarly, when listening to speech, there are a few consonants and points of emphasis that are much louder than the rest.
Commercials use what is called audio compression. This doesn’t make the peak levels any louder. What it does is bring the valleys up to a level that’s closer to the peaks. Thus the average volume is louder, even though the peak level is the same. Any pro audio outlet will sell you a box that will do this.
If Eshoo’s bill simply addresses the “volume level”, it will be interpreted as the peak volume level, and will have zero effect on the problem. You would think that with all the engineers in Palo Alto, somebody would have explained this to her.
Audio compression is used a lot in radio as well. Take your typical soft rock radio FM station. Most of the audience is in a car, sitting closer to the left speaker, with a lot of road noise in the background. To approximate what you would hear listening to a CD at home, the station cranks up the compression and also pushes the stereo separation toward the center so that the driver can hear what’s on the right channel.
Annoying? Certainly to the musicians who spent a lot of time mixing their song to what they consider the optimum mix, only to have the radio stations change it. To the listening audience out there on the freeway? Who knows?
I agree that loud commercials are annoying. I mostly avoid them by not watching channels that have them, or just by turning off the TV.
If Eshoo wants to come up with a bill that does something about the problem, she needs to have some serious audio engineers writing the specifications. Otherwise, “equalizing the volume” is just a meaningless phrase that will have absolutely no effect on the situation.
Eshoo’s bill is a job-killer!
If, as she believes, there’s a guy down at the TV station whose job it is to turn up the volume knob whenever the commercial comes on then her bill would put this imaginary person on unemployment!
Either that, or 10MHz Days has it right, the the Congresswoman doesn’t know what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks she is talking about.
She has, however, seized on a can’t-miss populist issue that a lot of suckers have bought into based on shared, but incorrect, assumptions.
10MHz IS right on this one. His technical explanation is spot on. Adding to what he has already provided consider this: some audio inherently sounds louder. A trumpet fanfare, played at the same volume, will sound louder than a harp solo played at the same volume. A lot of it is perception.
If anyone needs to shut up it’s Eshoo.