It's the thing about loud television advertising; everyone always knew it was there, but since there was never any official recognition of it, people always have suspected that it might just be their imagination. You probably never thought it would come to this, but there it is. Not only have they officially recognized it beyond denial, they just passed a law against it. They call the law, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation act, or CALM for short. Commercials are never literally louder than the program; they are just a electronically processed to sound that way.
If you've ever been on a band or ever worked at a radio station, you know all about the piece of equipment called the compressor/limiter. Every guitarist and vocalist uses one of these, to make the instrument or the voice stand out in a mix. Compressors take the sound waves that make up your voice, and basically turn up only the lowest sounds, so that they are closer in volume to the highest sounds. Nothing ever gets higher than the highest sound, it's just that when everything is as loud as the original loud peak, it seems to hit us a lot harder. But that is really beside the point. What one wants to know is, why do the advertisers even want to make television advertising twice as loud? Do they really think that they can drum their message deeper into your head if it's louder?
Actually, it's not just the money-mad businessmen who think that way. Musicians, with a new record to pitch on radio, routinely spend a lot of money on the mastering process, trying to get their songs to sound louder than the other songs. The more money they spend, the more esoteric the processes they get to use to get a leg up on the other songs. The thinking is, the louder the song is than the other songs, the more you'll pay attention to it, and maybe buy it. Does this kind of thinking work at all that all these people should be putting in good money into the process? Those television advertising people and business people don't spend a dime without thoroughly analyzing every move like it was high science - with focus groups and the opinion of a supercomputer.
Well, think of it this way. You may not necessarily think that loudness sells anything; but you do know that if you are quieter and less audible, you might sell less. It's just an arms race, trying to keep up with everyone else. Before CALM, the Advanced Television Systems Committee tried to bring a little sense to the proceedings, by putting out a covenant of practices. They point to the way TiVo owners skip ads. Its usually the local ads, the ones for local gas stations and supermarkets that get skipped the most. They say that regional advertising is usually done on a budget, and the local yokel advertising companies feel that louder is always better. Either way, TiVo is a big problem now for all television advertising; close to three-quarters of all TiVo owners skip all ads, regional and unsophisticatedly loud, or national and sophisticatedly quiet.
Television advertising is going to have to pull itself together, if it is not completely alienate what few fans it might have left now.