Papachote

Congress has passed the CALM (Commercial Announcement Loudness Mitigation) Act. definitely cause for celebration! The law requires the FCC to implement the regulation by December 15, 2011, which then would give the broadcasters and cable/satellite TV providers one year after that to comply. What this means for us is that have to put up with obnoxiously loud commercials for another year and a half.

What can we do? We can complain directly to our respective cable providers. Call or email your provider and complain. Here is a sample text that you may use as you wish:

Please adjust the volume of your commercials so it retains the same average sound level as your programming. Your practice of increasing the volume for commercials is extremely bothersome, and always has us scrambling to turn down the volume or mute the sound on the remote. As a consequence, watching your programming is a less enjoyable experience. 

Your practice of increasing the volume of commercials is so irritating that we associate these negative feelings with your sponsors, and we make a conscious decision to boycott those sponsors. You see, your strategy to get our attention then backfires, because you have gotten not only our attention, but you have also made us angry.

It has also been shown that hearing excessive sound levels over a long period of time can cause permanent hearing loss. I trust that your company would not deliberately engage in a practice that is harmful to our health. Just imagine the effect on your company if it had to deal with expensive, time-consuming and image-tarnishing individual or class action lawsuits for intentional harming of it’s customers’ health.

I urge you to please stop the irritating practice of transmitting commercials at higher sound levels. If you voluntarily comply before being forced to do so by the CALM Act and the FCC, you just may gain more satisfied customers.

I couldn’t prevent her from leaving; all I kept were memories. And now I can’t keep the memories from evaporating.