For years, television commercials have jerked viewers out of their seats with sudden spikes in loudness – but by this time next year, broadcasters will have to prevent advertisers from pumping up the volume.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced on Tuesday that broadcasters must control the loudness of the ads they air on TV. Their deadline to do so is Sept. 1, 2012 - the beginning of the fall TV season next year.
The federal broadcast regulator received 304 complaints about noisy commercials from Canadians last year, more than double the number it received in 2009.
But even more letters poured in this year, after the CRTC launched a process in February asking for comments from the public about loudness in television ads. It received more than 7,000 comments in response to that request.
“This has been a perennial issue. People have been complaining to us…we said, it’s time to do something,” CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said in an interview Tuesday. “There’s no reason why the industry can’t do it. The costs are minimal. The technology is there.”
The CRTC said in its statement that equipment to control loudness in commercials is widely available.
That’s mostly because there’s a market for the equipment: broadcasters in both the U.S. and the U.K. have already been required to address the problem of loudness in ads.
The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice in the U.K. brought new rules into effect in 2008. The Advertising Code there now states that “advertisements must not be excessively noisy or strident.”
Last December, the CALM Act was passed in the U.S. (the initials in the name stand for Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) requiring the Federal Communications Commission to keep TV networks in line. Within one year, the FCC must ensure that advertisers use industry technology to modulate sound levels, so that ads will be aired at a reasonable volume.
The U.S. law was based on recommendations established in 2009 by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), an international group that works to develop TV standards.
The CRTC is now telling broadcasters to adopt that standard for tracking television signals, to make sure commercials are not significantly louder than the TV shows they accompany. The CRTC will publish regulations by the end of this year requiring broadcasters to follow the ATSC standard, and they will be asked to implement it by next September.
The changes only apply to TV advertisements and will not be enforced for noise variations in videos that stream on broadcasters’ websites, such as ctv.ca or globaltv.com.
The call for comments in February came just days after a B.C.-based Member of Parliament proposed that a law be passed to change Canada’s Broadcast Act and require the CRTC to mitigate loudness in TV ads, the way the CALM Act in the U.S. did with the FCC.
Conservative MP Nina Grewal introduced the private member’s bill, which was scheduled to be debated in Parliament in March but was held up by the federal election. The regulator’s move to create new rules now means a new law is not necessary.
“It’s really great news for all of us, that the CRTC has responded with new regulations,” Ms. Grewal said in an interview Tuesday. “I’m very, very happy that they have taken action.
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WHAT THE BROADCASTERS SAY
The loudness “starts with the production side of the equation, which we don’t control,” Kevin Goldstein, vice-president of regulatory affairs for Bell Media BCE-T, which owns Canada’s largest private network, CTV, said in an interview Tuesday. “Realistically, from our perspective, to the extent that this issue is rectifiable, it requires a three-party solution: the broadcasters, the [cable and satellite providers] and, first and foremost, the production community.”
