Fellow MoJoer Nick Baumann draws my attention to a report suggesting that the U.S. Senate isn’t completely worthless after all. Here’s the evidence:
Legislation to turn down the volume on those loud TV commercials that send couch potatoes diving for their remote controls looks like it’ll soon become law. The Senate unanimously passed a bill late Wednesday to require television stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as the programs they interrupt.
….Managing the transition between programs and ads without spoiling the artistic intent of the producers poses technical challenges and may require TV broadcasters to purchase new equipment. To address the issue, an industry organization recently produced guidelines on how to process, measure and transmit audio in a uniform way.
The legislation, sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., requires the FCC to adopt those recommendations as regulations within a year and begin enforcing them a year later. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is the driving force behind the bill in the House.
It’s not a done deal yet: the bill still has to go to conference and then get a final vote in both House and Senate. But apparently no one expects that to be a problem unless someone throws a tantrum and decides to shut down the Senate because Barack Obama insulted their dog or something.
Anyway, this is indeed one of my great pet peeves. It’s sort of like the Do-Not-Call list: I don’t really care about principled arguments on either side. I don’t care if this regulation should be considered liberal, conservative, libertarian, fascist, or anything else. I just want the damn volume on advertisements to go down. If the only way to do it were to put a few network chiefs in front of firing squads just to send a message to the rest of them, I’d probably favor that too. Just get it done.
