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It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded. It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected.

I can buy that it's an example of market failure, but I'm not sure about the second part. According to the idealized free-market theory, this sort of stuff should be taken care of by the market just fine, by people changing the channel away from the objectionable ones, thus commercially penalizing them to the point where running quieter ads becomes the right business decision. That doesn't appear to have happened, probably because while people dislike loud TV ads enough to write to the FCC, they don't dislike them enough to actually meaningfully change their TV-watching habits (so channels with quieter ads don't really gain a commercial advantage).

But it is a market failure. The market for television shows is very far from perfectly competitive.

The products are very differentiated, and there are only a few companies providing the products. But the differentiation is really what matters in this case.

As much as everyone hates loud commercials, channels can't actually gain significant viewership by quieting them down--no one is going to watch a drama with quiet commercials when they really want to be watching the football game with loud commercials.

This means that there's no incentive for a channel to piss off their advertisers by doing this on their own.

This is what governments are for--mandating the socially optimal strategy when the dominant strategy is something else.

Actually, I don't think that's the source of the market failure. The source of the market failure is that there is no real feedback to the advertisers when the recipients are disgruntled or annoyed. The only people that matter are the Nielson raters, and I don't think there's a slot on their forms for being annoyed by volume. If advertisers saw a big dip every time the commercials came on, and could ask the customers why, and then could run an experiment with more level volume and find out people don't tune out so quickly, they could learn and the market could correct, but due to the nature of the technology not a single step of the requisite path actually existed 20 years ago, and still mostly not today.

>According to the idealized free-market theory

Calling this a "theory" is giving it more credit than is warranted. It's largely an experienced opinion and the only kind of falsification you can do on it is see if implementing parts of it cause society to implode.

The term "idealized free-market theory" refers to the study of a mathematical model, much like "group theory" refers to the study of groups. It's not a falsible scientific theory that asserts that the model matches reality to any extent.

I think this is probably one of the things the government can do that is unambiguously good and will touch the lives of many, many Americans. It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded.

It's not clear to me what evidence you'd use to show that this was unambiguously good, given that Americans have had the option to buy TVs with this feature for a long time, and mostly don't bother. To me, this would suggest that the assertion that it's an unambiguous good is at least questionable: if it's not worth a few extra dollars, how do we measure "good"?

Americans have had the technology to turn the volume up when commercials start, if so desired, for even longer than that.

It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected.

There's no free rider element here, so I fail to see how this is a textbook case. The temperature at most public places isn't regulated by the government. Is it a tragedy that it's typically colder at the movie theater? No, experience tells you to dress a bit warmer. As with clothing and climate control systems, TV technology gives us the means to control our own environment: volume controls, DVRs that skip commercials, auto-leveling features, etc.

Given how much we can control/regulate our own personal environments, and even to some extent in the marketplace by having merchants cater to our preferences, do we really need this legislation and is it a priority given the current state of affairs?

The other way to solve this problem would have been for TV manufacturers to install limiters in TVs. The technology has been around for decades but it has never caught on. Regulation is a less-ideal solution to the problem vs technology because the feedback loop is long. Install a limiter in your TV today and the problem is solved immediately.

Seems like the manufacturing side might also be a market failure--it's a feature that most/all consumers want but since the market is fiercely price-competitive no manufacturer wants to pay for it. Still, it seems like a feature that Sony/LG/etc could advertise and gain a small amount of market share for.

And their ads could be really loud to get the extra attention of people they're trying to reach."THIS COULD BE THE LAST LOUD COMMERCIAL YOU HEAR!"I suspect this feature may have been in some TVs, but unless it's in all TVs from a company, other features may win out. Sure I wanted "smart sound" but I wanted PIP more. I also suspect that VOD, Tivo, torrents and others mean that fewer people are actually watching commercials anyway. This move is about 15 years too late.