THE US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is introducing rules to force broadcast, cable and satellite companies to turn down the volume on blaring TV commercials.
On Tuesday, the FCC passed a set of regulations that will prevent commercials from being louder than the shows around them.
It's all part of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which President Obama signed into law last December.
The rules will go into effect a year from now.
Companies that don't comply will face unspecified FCC action.
The FCC says people have grumbled about thunderous TV ads for at least a half century, but since 2002 the number of complaints about the issue has grown.
In the days of analog TV, louder ads took up more space on the airwaves, so broadcasters toned them down to avoid interfering with other channels.
However, since the conversion to digital TV broadcasts two years ago, loud ads no longer take up more airwave space than quiet ones. The change transformed the commercial break into a noisy arms race.
"Nobody wanted to be the quiet guy in the set of commercials," says David Unsworth, senior vice president of satellite and technical operations at DG, a company that distributes ads to broadcasters.
In a recent analysis, DG found that some ads were 10 times as loud as the programs they interrupted.
"Everybody's been trying to push the envelope using (digital) compression to make their spots as loud as they can," Mr Unsworth says.
A few years ago, an "horribly loud" commercial annoyed Anna Eshoo, a Democratic congresswoman from California. Her brother-in-law suggested she do something about it. She did - with what started as a simple, one-page legislative proposal.
It became one of the most popular Bills she has ever sponsored.
"What I never dreamed of was what kind of chord it would strike with people," Ms Eshoo says.
The FCC rules require TV distributors to set up equipment to monitor the average sound level of ads as they come in - and adjust them if they are too loud. If compliance with the rules places a financial burden on a company, the FCC will give it extra time - up to December 2014 - to comply.
Those concessions have helped to reduce opposition.
"We think that the FCC struck the right balance," says National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton.
In the months leading up to the FCC's release of the new rules, advertisers were already turning down the noise. Now only about 30 per cent of ads are too loud,Unsworth says.
Hundreds of TV stations, cable and satellite companies have updated equipment to comply, says Tim Carroll, founder and president of Linear Acoustic Inc, a leading maker of the equipment.
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