An even better Christmas present

Forget about health care reform.  The House just passed what’s sure to be it’s most popular legislative achievement in the last decade on a voice vote.  The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act would:

[R]equire the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program material they accompany.

And you thought the days of unanimous consent in the Senate were over.  Now if only they could do something about the Sham Wow guy…

h/t Matt Yglesias

Update* – According to at least one study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, commericals aren’t actually louder than the television shows they appear on.  Instead, the TV shows have a wider range of decibel levels throughout the program.  The commercials tend to have a much narrower decibel range at the top end of the program volume.  So the volume that the show might use only in a scene with an explosion and lots of gunfire, for example is the volume of the commercial.  Still, the average decibel level of the actual program is probably significantly lower than the average decibel level of its commercials, even if the show sometimes gets as loud as its commercials.

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