00:00You know, when you are intensely listening and watching TV and then all of a sudden your show gets interrupted by.
00:09Sorry. Federal law prohibits commercials played on public airwaves from being blared louder than the program you're watching.
00:18And now Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a California bill that will force streaming services to abide by the same law.
00:30You're watching Straight Arrow News right now.
00:32If we were being played on a public channel regulated by the FCC, then we would have certain loudness standards to follow.
00:40And if this video were to be interrupted by a commercial.
00:43Right this second at some diner somewhere.
00:45I'll have a.
00:47Then that advertisement would have to stay within the same average loudness of the program it's interrupting.
00:53This is regulated by the FCC through what's called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, also known as the CALM Act.
01:03California Senate Bill 576 that Newsom signed this week requiring video streaming services to transmit audio of commercial advertisements consistent with the CALM Act.
01:15Meaning this over a decade old regulation is being modernized, now applicable to streaming services.
01:23While this is a California state law and technically would only apply to commercials streamed in that state, it would likely be more work for streamers to regulate commercials a certain way for one state and a different way for all the rest.
01:38So as Politico put it, the new law may strong arm streamers into shushing commercials nationwide.
01:46The California state senator who authored the bill said it was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who's finally gotten a baby to sleep only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work.
02:02Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law and said we heard Californians loud and clear.
02:07And what's clear is that they don't want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program.
02:16The Motion Picture Association and Streaming Innovators Alliance, two groups that represent major streamers like Netflix, Disney, Paramount and Amazon.
02:27They initially opposed the law, saying they already had engineers working to address the issue.
02:33But these streaming giants dropped their opposition after it was clarified that they cannot be sued over the issue.
02:42Instead, complaints will go to the state's attorney general's office, leaving it up to California to investigate or escalate the matter.
02:51But the Calm Act, on the federal level, has gone largely unenforced.
02:56According to a 2021 legal review from a broadcaster's association, nine years after the Calm Act went into effect,
03:05the FCC has never brought a Calm Act enforcement action, despite receiving well over 1,000 complaints per year since 2012.
03:15That history suggests California's new law may face similar challenges and how effectively it can police its own version of the federal statute.
03:27Thank you for watching our news update.
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