Watching the Titans game on Sunday it was so bad, Mr. Beale put the TV on mute during all of the commercials. You’d think that advertisers would realize that pumping up the volume on their ads is a surefire way to get people to turn them off and miss the message entirely. I guess you’d be wrong.
Anyway, apparently we can’t have decent healthcare reform or anything regulating carbon emissions, or a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. But maybe, just maybe, our glorious Democratic majority that we all worked so hard to achieve can do something about this:
Congress goes after those annoying TV ads that are WAY LOUDER THAN THE PROGRAMS
December 14, 2009 | 4:44 pm
You know how sometimes those folks on TV -- even on our favorite Sunday political talk shows -- are conversing so softly that you turn up the volume a little. And then forget about it.
Until the commercial comes on and it's, WHOA! SO MUCH LOUDER THAN THE SHOWS?
So you scramble for the remote, fiddle with the volume button and curse the product being advertised, ranting about how these stupid things should be illegal.
Even though, come to think of it, there's a serious question about inviting the feds in to control television volume in individual homes.
Apparently, this loud volume has also struck the ears of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. He's a Democrat, of course. From Rhode Island.
He's now introduced legislation called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Migration Act of 2009 -- the unnecessary "M" word obviously being thrown in to construct the cutesy acronym, CALM. Feels better already, right?
The bill proposes that the Federal Communications Commission regulate commercials, mandating that the sales pitches must remain at the same decibel level as the show that precedes them. Rep. Anna Eshoo, of Menlo Park, another Democrat, has introduced companion legislation in the House.
Actually, I thought we already had a regulation about this. Guess not.
Trust me, I'd much rather have healthcare reform, and our troops home for Christmas, and some kind of action on climate change, and a whole mess of other stuff. But clearly our Democrats in Congress are completely unable to do anything major so I would like to offer my wholehearted support for CALM.
Try not to fuck this one up too, okay?
