California’s new law will make streaming ad quieter: What governor Gavin Newsom said

It is a universally frustrating experience – you turn up the volume to hear a quiet whisper of dialogue in your favourite show, only for an advertisement to blast through the speakers at high volumes seconds later.

Starting July 1, that annoying volume change will become illegal in California. Under a new state law (SB 576), streaming platforms will be strictly prohibited from airing advertisements at a higher volume than the shows they accompany.According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, California governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill last year. “We heard Californians loud and clear, and 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,” he said.The report says that federal law already requires ads to match the average volume of the content being watched, though it only applies to TV broadcasters and cable operators. The new law will make it mandatory for streaming platforms to do the same.Senator Senator Umberg, who introduced the bill (SB 576) said that this bill was actually inspired by “baby Samantha” and every exhausted parent out there. “This bill 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.

SB 576 brings some much-needed peace and quiet to California households by making sure streaming ads aren’t louder than the shows we actually want to watch,” Umberg said in a statement last year.In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Umberg said, “If they can find a way to boost the volume, they can find a way to not boost the volume.”

Tech groups push back

According to the report, the entertainment and tech sectors have pushed back against the government mandate. The Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance both opposed the measure, arguing that legislative intervention is unnecessary because many streaming platforms are already actively working to fix the technical issue on their own.They noted that services frequently intervene to adjust commercial loudness caused by automated digital ad insertion and are currently trying to establish their own industry-wide best practices for normalizing audio levels.