California passes law to reduce volume of commercials on streaming services | Hacker News Reader

California passes law to reduce volume of commercials on streaming services

gov.ca.gov

82 pointsmikhael57 comments

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45499281

In Australia there's the OP-59 loudness spec that any piece of broadcast content has to meet. It dictates maximum average loudness level across the program as well as short term loudness and true peak loudness. It's also the standard in the UK I believe. Is there not a similar spec for TV in America? If I mixed something for TV here and it didn't meet the OP-59 standard it would get rejected by the broadcaster.

US equivalent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudn...

We also need that for brightness. The brightness on Amazon Prime TV ads is painful. I literally hide under a blanket until they are done.

It's talking about the specific content being watched, right? Could a media company release a silent episode, then if any ad with noise is played on it, file suit?

I think in the standard they use for calculating the normalized loudness (bs1770) is technically undefined for silent content

Broadcasters used to say the ads were no louder than the regular programming, but the "density" was higher, so the seem louder, and that if you measured them with a dB meter you wouldn't see any change.

That was years ago, though. I wonder if it was true back then, and if so whether or not it changed over time.

right now there's an industry standard way to measure perceived loudness, and at least in saner places - the limits were already set in place.

It was only ever true by an extremely specific, now outdated, definition of loudness. Basically commercials back then would have the audio extremely compressed, such that they were always at the maximum possible volume allowable by your system at a given volume setting, whereas content mixed to be enjoyed would be mixed such that there are louder and quieter moments, which is both gentler on the ear and more dynamic.

You know how movies are mixed such that they have really quiet dialogue and big explosions are like 4-5x as loud? Commercials are in explosion-mode the whole time.

So yeah, commercials are mixed louder than the rest of the content on purpose, just to try to snag your attention. If they could, advertisers would come into your house and turn the volume on your AV receiver/soundbar/tv/computer/phone way up themselves.

Music albums have been suffering by dynamic range compression as well. They apparently sell better since they sound louder, but information is lost in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

As I understand it radio stations used to like "loud" albums because people can't hear the quiet parts in their car as a result of road and engine noise. And people bought what they heard on the radio, generally.

I'm not sure that's still true. Music fans seem to be pretty heavily siloed, so they're probably discovering music through the internet somehow and not radio.

That's the leading theory for why CDs started to get compressed. It happened right after portable and car CD players hit the scene in the early nineties.

This has mostly ended in most genres of music due to audio volume normalization algorithms in streaming platforms like Spotify and Tidal.

> density

It’s reduced dynamic range, this is done using audio compression which, roughly, has the effect of making the quiet parts louder and and loud parts quieter, then the volume level can be increased. The overall effect is to keep the decibel levels the same, but the every sound within the range is now shouting at you.

> has the effect of making the quiet parts louder and and loud parts quieter

Not quite. The ceiling of the signal is the same. The quiet parts have gain added but the louder parts (over the threshold/above the knee) receive no modification at all.

Once compression is complete you might even do a normalization pass to ensure that the loudest impulse in your audio achieves 0dBFS.

Put the two together and you have a "wall of noise" effect.

I wrote “roughly” on purpose, but I think your description is wrong. A compressor triggers when the signal goes above a threshold, this applies a compression factor to the loud signal, which reduces the overall gain of the loud sounds (they become quieter). That is what reduces the overall dynamic range. Making the loud sounds quieter.

Most compressors then have a ‘make up’ gain control to recover the lost volume. That process makes the quieter sounds louder.

Your description sounds like an expander.

I think what they meant by "density" was that the entire commercial was near the max volume, whereas the show you were watching was mostly at a lower volume with occasional peaks.

You're literally describing dynamic range. The volume is the same in the show and the advert, but the perception of loudness is completely different. You perceive the adverts as louder because of the reduced dynamic range, even though they're not actually louder at all. This reduction in dynamic range is done by pre-processing the audio [in the advert] with a compressor. It lifts the quieter sounds (reducing the dynamic range), which creates more of a 'wall of sound' but the overall decibel levels are the same.

https://www.uaudio.com/blogs/ua/audio-compression-basics

Were there any streaming services that played ads at a louder level than the content...?

Either at louder levels, or playing the old game of volume vs. compression

Yes...?

At least on the roku apps most of them do for me. I might be willing to believe that it's just them unintentionally misconfiguring it or something; I'm sure roku isn't the primary focus for any of them, but either way, they need to fix it.

It's for sure an intentional issue considering how long its been there without getting fixed.

So obnoxious as well, it isn't somewhat louder, it's aggressively louder.

Hulu

All of them? It's gotten so bad that I remapped the Netflix button on the Shield remote to mute the receiver. The remote has volume up/down buttons, but no mute, and ads are _so_ loud now.

Hitting vol up and down at the same time on the shield remote will mute. i thought shield also had a way to reduce dynamic range in the audio settings to make this a non issue for those that don’t their audio data being fiddled with.

Are there any that don’t?

Presumably there’s liability if the viewer is in California. But suppose the viewer is on the east coast and the server is in California - can the east coaster sue under this law?

There's no private right of action under the law, so even CA residents can't sue.

Which is really interesting, but also understandable. On the one hand, you would think a private rate of action gives significantly more eyes for compliance. However, as we've seen with prop 65, these kind of things just create a new industry for lawyers.

"Umberg’s bill faced resistance from Hollywood giants this summer. The Motion Picture Association and Streaming Innovators Alliance, which together represent entertainment conglomerates including Disney, Paramount, Amazon and Netflix, initially opposed the law, arguing that streaming ads come from multiple different sources and are hard to control. The MPA claimed in-house audio engineers were already working on a fix and needed time to solve the issue without facing legal threats. However, the group dropped its opposition after Umberg added legal provisions shielding streamers from lawsuits brought by private parties, leaving enforcement up to the state attorney general’s office. The amended bill passed California’s state Legislature with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans."[1]

Wouldn't be shocked if it was a huge nothingburger enforcement wise.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/06/dial-it-down-califo...

I literally can't stand watching football because of this. The commercials are so frequent, and the volume is so loud, that you can't even talk to the people in the room with you. Especially considering the volume is already high to allow for people wandering away and to also be audible over the conversations.

Finally! Bulgarian ads are terrible, too. In fact, the advertisers are beyond stupid, as every time they blast me with their commercial messages and stress me out and hurt my ears, they get banned from my life! Obnoxious marketing does not work in the 21st century!

Car commercials have to be the worst, and the cheaper the car, the louder the commercial.

Heh, this is the kind of "minor harm" regulation I'd typically associate with Britain rather than the US. Is the culture shifting, or is this just a California thing?

I'd say mostly a California thing, though there are a number of states that sooner-or-later tend to adopt the same ideas that California leads on.

I think California does this kind of thing a lot. A while back, they began requiring cancer warning at coffee shops [0].

I'm not in California, but growing up at least, I associated it was goofy small laws like this (along with not so goofy real laws as well).

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starbucks-cancer-warning-judge-...

Note that your example is not a new “goofy small law”, but an industry losing a lawsuit because of complete failure to present relevant evidence in a lawsuit applying a long-established, big (but maybe still goofy) law to them.

With the result being a goofy warning on something benign. The practical result, that helps no-one (probably harms, with desensitization of cancer warnings through obvious government driven misapplication/ineptitude), is what makes it a goofy law.

This particular California law applies a rule applied to TV by a 2010 US federal law to modern media that have largely replaced TV. (It is even named after the federal law.)

So, as a broad kind of concern, no, it is not just a California thing.

This kind of stuff (regulation) only happens because the industry recognizes that they're in an arms race that they can't stop that will cause people to stop watching TV.

Is this really something that’s necessary to introduce another regulation for?

It feels like one of those Peter Griffin, you know what really grinds my gears segments.

Thank goodness this isn't an issue on HN.

SMELLY CUTICLES? BUY OUR CUTICLE DEODORANT!

Seriously, how come TVs don't come with companders built in?

Imagine having to regulate this, and what it means of the the advertisers and the streaming services that allow it...

Yet more proof that advertising is psychological assault and advertisers are malicious entities.

Block ads for your data safety, your sanity and your comfort level in your own home. Feel no remorse for a morally-bankrupt industry riddled with scammers and grifters. Anything that would be lost in the absence of advertising was not worth having in the first place.

By this definition anyone talking to you is socialy manipulating you. Manipulation is an every day part of life and it's not healthy to try and avoid it as it means you must cut off all social interaction.

There is a beauty in how humans can impact other humans in how they act and think. How they choose to group up. What they spend their time doing. Working together to accomplish things. Helping each other.

Your first paragraph is a good point worth making, worth being aware of, and I agree (or at least mostly agree).

I love the poetic nature of your second paragraph, and also agree. But it feels a very large distance from the topic and nature of advertising, at least as far as I experience it today.

I'd vote to ban all Cal Worthington ads. Those ads made late night TV utterly unwatchable.

What will happen to his dog Spot?

Fuck that stupid fight network ad on PlutoTV where it plays the tinnitus sound effect.

Inb4 the media companies argue that it's violating muh "free speech"*

* a universally good concept but this isn't an example of it unless you're a lawyer.

inb4 media is liable for damages to your equipment when signal level suddenly exceeds nominal.

Heh. The USA, getting there one law at a time. Have they banned stealing yet? Oh wait, never mind.

We are no longer one country it seems.

I think you're more likely talking about the growing divide between people's viewpoints, but the USA always made more sense to me when I viewed it as union of 50 different countries, with some over-arching laws over the top. More similar to the EU than to a single country.

Ah, yes, audio volume. The biggest problem of advertising.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but actually it historically has been a problem. In the US it became regulated for TV in 2010 with the CALM Act, and this is just a modernization of that. https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials

Reply on news.ycombinator.com