Sorry what? What did you say? Turn it down?
OK, we’ll stop the bit. But we’re illustrating something important here: In the U.S., commercials aren’t allowed to be louder than regular TV programming. That’s thanks to the CALM Act, which Congress passed in 2012.
However, ‘not allowed to be’ and ‘aren’t’ are two different things. It appears some ads have slipped CALM Act enforcement, because after the number of complaints about loud advertisements “took a troubling jump” in 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says it’s now seeking public comment about the volume of commercials.
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“Over the past several years the Commission received thousands of complaints about loud commercials on broadcast, cable, and satellite television,” it said in a press release this week. “Through this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Commission will consider additional actions the Commission could take today to make sure TV viewers aren’t inundated by exceedingly loud commercials in the future.”
Now, to be clear, the CALM Act as it stands only applies to traditional TV networks and pay TV providers like cable and satellite. It does not apply to advertisements played by streaming services like Netflix and YouTube (which, yes, Nielsen counts as a streaming service–in fact, the biggest in the world by watch volume).
As PCMag points out, though, complaints filed in 2024 included complaints about TV ads run by streaming services.
In its call for public comment, the FCC asks consumers “what actions the Commission, industry, or standard developers could take to further minimize consumer harm.”
Based on that language and the complaints specifically citing streaming services, we’re wondering if future additions to the CALM Act will include regulating streamers, now that they comprise such a significant part of TV watch time–not to mention a serious chunk of the $300 billion U.S. businesses will spend on digital ads this year.
We’re not surprised the FCC has seen complaints about ads on streaming services. They’re getting more and more frequent, with services like Netflix adding paid tiers and Amazon‘s Prime Video adding non-negotiable, unskippable ads. Meanwhile, YouTube-on-TV (not to be confused with pay-to-watch OTT offering YouTube TV) has been consistently getting more and longer ads, leading to ire from some viewers. If they’re getting louder, too? Yikes.
