"Ears-To-You Collage" Copyright by Sharon McEachern
"No, no, we promise we'll voluntarily change and do right, just don't regulate us!"
Everyone has been singing this tune lately. Last week it was the health insurance industry promising gender parity, saying it will no longer charge women more than men for health coverage.
Today it's television advertisers and broadcasters, promising to voluntarily lower the sound volume when TV commercials come on, if the government will just keep out of it.
WE PROMISE, TRUST US
But can we trust them? Why didn't they "voluntarily" do the right thing and lower the decibel level before? Because most of the greedy bastards won't practice ethical business standards unless they are forced by law -- and then, if you catch them breaking the law, they are seldom really punished for it.
The arrogance is unbelievable -- they have the expectation that we should be oh-so-grateful and accept their promises of future behavior, and forgive current and past discriminations and greed.
SORRY, WE CAN'T HEAR YOU
But, if you can pretend that the above-examples are merely aberrations and you can believe in promises from industries which spend millions of dollars lobbying to influence lawmakers, then things are looking up for saving your ear drums.
OUR EAR DRUMS BURST WATCHING TV
Under the proposal currently being considered, the Federal Communications Commission would turn down ad volumes to the average decibels of the TV show during which they appear. Right now, TV ads cannot be louder than the loudest peak in a show, according to David Perry, chairman of the broadcast production committee of the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies.
JUST ONE BLOOD CURDLING SCREAM
"That means if the program you're watching has one bomb blast or just one blood curdling scream, all the commercials during that program may blast and scream at that same sound threshold," says Gary Sattler at Walletpop.
WE'RE GOING TO CALM YOU
The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act , or CALM, has 63 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate, according to the McClatchy Newspapers.
But advertisers and broadcasters say they have their own plan to lower TV ad volume and they want to set their own loudness standards. Well, of course, they do.
HEAR TV ADS IN MONGOLIA ?
Advertisers and broadcasters say they want a commercial which is "loud enough that a reasonable person can hear it, but not so loud you can hear it in Mongolia," according to Dan Jaffe, exec. vp of the Assn. of National Advertisers.
Gary Sattler says: "Personally, I'd be happy with a level of volume which will simply keep my popcorn in its bowl and the bowl on my lap."
One Noreen Clark of Los Angeles said in a letter to the Daily Breeze (LA): "The sound jumps up so fast and obnoxiously that it not only hurts my ears, but the cat's claws go to into my leg and..."
It's not as if we the consumers have no control. Au contraire!And I'm not talking about grabbing the remote to mute the sound of TV commercials -- after we've been blasted off our couches.
YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME
We can simply record the programs we want to watch and fast-forward through the commercial interruptions.
Beware advertisers and broadcasters -- you aren't the boss of me! Keep it down!
By Sharon McEachern
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