FCC To Lower The Volume On Excessively Loud TV Commercials

Has anyone else noticed how much louder the commercials on TV are nowadays? I can think of a few particular ones that are even louder than the actual programming. It's annoying, it's intrusive, and the FCC is finally doing something about it.

Yesterday, the FCC passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act. The act will require broadcasters to make sure the sound level for both commercials and TV programming are the same, thereby (hopefully) ending those annoying, blaring commercials:

"Most of us have … experienced this ourselves: You're watching your favorite television program, or the news, and all of a sudden, a commercial comes on, and it sounds like someone turned up the volume — but no one did. Today, theFCC is quieting a persistent problem of the television age: loud commercials," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

There is a slight catch, however: the act will not officially go into effect until December 2012. So, until then, I'm going to keep putting those commercials on mute.