I feel the opposite way. This strikes me like having hearings about steroids in baseball --- blatant pandering for votes instead of dealing with real issues with real consequences. I have no problem with individual networks or stations deciding that they want to better serve their audiences, but can this possibly be the best use of time for our nation's highest governing bodies? Going further, what's the positive national interest in encouraging Americans to watch yet more broadcast television?
> Blatant pandering for votes instead of dealing with real issues with real consequences.
I think this is probably one of the things the government can do that is unambiguously good and will touch the lives of many, many Americans. It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded. It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected. It seems like a perfect thing for the governing bodies of the country to spend time on if that's what it takes to get it done.
I do not buy your theory that this is pandering for votes. I doubt very many people will chose their elected representatives based on this issue. Instead, I think that is just a convenient rhetorical device by which you are discounting the value of this measure.
> Going further, what's the positive national interest in encouraging Americans to watch yet more broadcast television?
Personally I don't think it's in the national interest for the government to decide for its citizens what they ought to be doing with their time. Instead, it should observe what the citizens wish to do and, where appropriate and efficient, facilitate those activities.
It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded. It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected.
I can buy that it's an example of market failure, but I'm not sure about the second part. According to the idealized free-market theory, this sort of stuff should be taken care of by the market just fine, by people changing the channel away from the objectionable ones, thus commercially penalizing them to the point where running quieter ads becomes the right business decision. That doesn't appear to have happened, probably because while people dislike loud TV ads enough to write to the FCC, they don't dislike them enough to actually meaningfully change their TV-watching habits (so channels with quieter ads don't really gain a commercial advantage).
But it is a market failure. The market for television shows is very far from perfectly competitive.
The products are very differentiated, and there are only a few companies providing the products. But the differentiation is really what matters in this case.
As much as everyone hates loud commercials, channels can't actually gain significant viewership by quieting them down--no one is going to watch a drama with quiet commercials when they really want to be watching the football game with loud commercials.
This means that there's no incentive for a channel to piss off their advertisers by doing this on their own.
This is what governments are for--mandating the socially optimal strategy when the dominant strategy is something else.
Actually, I don't think that's the source of the market failure. The source of the market failure is that there is no real feedback to the advertisers when the recipients are disgruntled or annoyed. The only people that matter are the Nielson raters, and I don't think there's a slot on their forms for being annoyed by volume. If advertisers saw a big dip every time the commercials came on, and could ask the customers why, and then could run an experiment with more level volume and find out people don't tune out so quickly, they could learn and the market could correct, but due to the nature of the technology not a single step of the requisite path actually existed 20 years ago, and still mostly not today.
Calling this a "theory" is giving it more credit than is warranted. It's largely an experienced opinion and the only kind of falsification you can do on it is see if implementing parts of it cause society to implode.
The term "idealized free-market theory" refers to the study of a mathematical model, much like "group theory" refers to the study of groups. It's not a falsible scientific theory that asserts that the model matches reality to any extent.
The other way to solve this problem would have been for TV manufacturers to install limiters in TVs. The technology has been around for decades but it has never caught on. Regulation is a less-ideal solution to the problem vs technology because the feedback loop is long. Install a limiter in your TV today and the problem is solved immediately.
Seems like the manufacturing side might also be a market failure--it's a feature that most/all consumers want but since the market is fiercely price-competitive no manufacturer wants to pay for it. Still, it seems like a feature that Sony/LG/etc could advertise and gain a small amount of market share for.
And their ads could be really loud to get the extra attention of people they're trying to reach."THIS COULD BE THE LAST LOUD COMMERCIAL YOU HEAR!"I suspect this feature may have been in some TVs, but unless it's in all TVs from a company, other features may win out. Sure I wanted "smart sound" but I wanted PIP more. I also suspect that VOD, Tivo, torrents and others mean that fewer people are actually watching commercials anyway. This move is about 15 years too late.
I think this is probably one of the things the government can do that is unambiguously good and will touch the lives of many, many Americans. It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded.
It's not clear to me what evidence you'd use to show that this was unambiguously good, given that Americans have had the option to buy TVs with this feature for a long time, and mostly don't bother. To me, this would suggest that the assertion that it's an unambiguous good is at least questionable: if it's not worth a few extra dollars, how do we measure "good"?
It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected.
There's no free rider element here, so I fail to see how this is a textbook case. The temperature at most public places isn't regulated by the government. Is it a tragedy that it's typically colder at the movie theater? No, experience tells you to dress a bit warmer. As with clothing and climate control systems, TV technology gives us the means to control our own environment: volume controls, DVRs that skip commercials, auto-leveling features, etc.
Given how much we can control/regulate our own personal environments, and even to some extent in the marketplace by having merchants cater to our preferences, do we really need this legislation and is it a priority given the current state of affairs?
It would be a simple project, but the problem is that it would probably mute explosions and gunfire too.
More on the article, it's nice they're doing this and all, I don't care so much since I don't watch t.v., but I don't think a simple facepalm expresses my feeling that this is about the best our government can do over the past few years when it comes to making the lives of its citizens better.
> I don't think a simple facepalm expresses my feeling that this is about the best our government can do over the past few years when it comes to making the lives of its citizens better.
A few problems with this statement:
- Many people probably feel you are discounting some of the work the government has done over the past few years. The stimulus and healthcare (depending on who you ask) both significantly improved the lives of large sections of the citizenry. And there are probably countless minor laws that fixed various problems that weren't quite as important to you.
- I don't like the assumption that the government's primary role is to make the lives of the people better in ways it is not already doing. This leads to government expansion and often fiscal irresponsibility and economic inefficiency. To put it concretely: a lot of the things you probably believe would "make the lives of [the country's] citizens better" cost money. That is, other people's money, people who might not value these things as much as you do. The government could I'm sure give every citizen a pair of roller skates, and that would "better" the lives of the citizens, but it also has a cost.
You're right my comment can be troublesome, nkurz expresses part of my position more clearly.
People are free to feel I'm discounting the stimulus and the healthcare package, personally I believe those to be insufficient and a mess, whether they will ultimately really improve everyone's situation is still to be seen and debated (elsewhere). I admit I'm likely ignorant on many minor laws that were passed that are useful to certain groups of people.
My assumption on the government making lives better is not that it should come up with more ways to do so, or less ways, but that it should simply focus on the big things and not these little things, which would include giving everyone some rollerblades. I'm also aware that everything has a cost, I don't see how stating that is an argument for anything. Of course government should weigh costs and benefits before rolling out some plan.
More concretely and with respect to this specific problem, it's something the government should keep its hands out of. This problem is easily solved by a free market solution of buying a sophisticated (i.e. capable of distinguishing commercial from program) device to do this for you without failing on the obvious cases (as the top comment suggested), the lack of which suggests it's not all that important a problem in the first place. (And in fact, it seems like advertising is the more significant complaint, which is why things like Netflix and TiVo exist.) Plus a good-enough solution exists already: the mute button. If government should be providing any sort of service to better people's lives, it should be weighted such that only those services which provide the best improvement for the best costs should be implemented. Let's talk about the costs of eliminating national poverty, not making sure everyone with a scraped knee can go to the store and receive a free bandaid.
Edit: (Yes, I also realize that a failure of the free market doesn't mean there's no problem, but in this case, I think there really is no big deal and the government can stay away.)
EditEdit: On the other hand, the government nearly controls public broadcast anyway. Not straight-up censorship controlling but e.g. the recent force-upgrade to digital over analog, the list of words you can't say on public t.v. There are so many issues with this that it's hard to get a clear picture.
Shortest job finishes first. Big things will have big debates, big compromises, filibusters, on and on. In that time thousands of "little things" could have made it through.
Personally, I would try both. Get big things in the pipeline but get as many quick wins as possible. To do as you suggest leaves you in a position of having accomplished literally nothing after years in office.
When both democrats and republicans agree on something, you can almost guarantee it's been requested for decades by the population they supposedly represent.
My gut reaction to this was positive because I really hate loud commercials, but after giving it some thought I don't understand the rationale for government intervention here. Watching TV is a voluntary exchange; the viewers put up with commercials, and the networks produce TV shows for a lower cost than if there were no commercials. Asking the government to use the threat of violence to interfere with this exchange doesn't change the underlying economic reality; making TV costs money and the viewer needs to pay for it one way or the other. Now we have the additional cost of more government regulations born by taxpayers and the networks, so this seems to be a net loss for everybody.
The text of the bill doesn't contain any actual definitions (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-2847), but instead instructs the FCC to make mandatory the document Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television (A/85), published by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, a standards body. That document is open-access here: http://www.atsc.org/cms/standards/a_85-2009.pdf
It contains a method of setting the loudness of a program via a volume control, which is based on some sort of average of the underlying waveform (not peak sample value), and then "recommends" that during changes between program and interstitial content (like advertisements), the same loudness setting be used.
It seems broadly similar to something like Replay Gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain), which sets volume based on an average that's intended to capture perceived loudness.
I work at a TV station in the bay area, this is total bullshit. I have a dial that controls the volume of both the TV shows, and the spots. Fuck the TV station, I CONTROL YOUR TV!! Jk, I just don't care to turn the dial down every commercial break (we have really old equipment). Every spot and show has a slightly different volume, except the British comedies. Wtf is up with that? Those things fucking blow up my airwaves. Why do you do that to me BBC?
My question is: why haven't the tv manufacturers figured out a way to automatically regulate the volume to prevent loud commercials? It doesn't seem like it'd be impossible to solve and it'd be a great selling point.
Makes sense though - older folks probably watch more broadcast/cable TV the old fashioned way, with commercials, as opposed to using a TV to watch movies or streamed episodes.
It helps maintain consistent volume across commercials, different channels, and different input sources. I have a Toshiba Regza TV that's equipped with it and it's great. It was a deciding factor in the purchase of my TV.
Limitig volume (decibels) has little impact on the perceived loudness of sound. This is easily demonstrated by listening to a sine wave and white noise at the same volume. For a practical demonstration, see http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/discovering-reason/in...
Ah yes, but the text of the bill uses the word 'loudness' which maps more accurately to dba's, which is perceived sound intensity. This takes the ear's frequency response into account as well.
... that's nice? Are you expecting people to call up their senators and explain the subtleties of audio perception and how the commercial that they just heard exploits the differences between perception and audio level to actually be louder than the primary content without reading any differently on a decibelmeter?
Here's my prediction: this bill will have absolutely no effect other than to make running a television station more expensive.
You can't solve this through legislation because you can't efficiently fine offenders. If you care about the loudness of commercials, stop watching television or start building a commercial solution.
Do HNers still watch TV?
I stopped paying for TV ~ 2 years ago and find it mildly nauseating when I visit relatives and they want to have it on in the background.
I watch live sports events, there's no good on-line replacement for that yet. I have the minimum level of TV + Internet from Comcast, as that's cheaper than Internet alone.
I like my push TV service (i.e. cable) for the following things:
1. sports -- there is no viable alternative at the moment.
2. Sometimes I just want to veg and channel surf (be passively entertained). There is no good way to do this with online services or recorded stuff.
3. Sometimes I need push infotainment because I don't know about the existence of something to actively pursue interest in it. While HN and Reddit (and so on) are rapidly replacing this niche, there are some things they just don't do well, somethings are just more interesting when presented as a video first, rather than as a link (cooking stuff comes to mind...).
That being said, having the TV on in the background is different than "still watch TV", and I agree, it is a bit annoying and sad.
We haven't had broadcast TV in our home for 10 years, and haven't had an actual TV for about 7 years. It's been Netflix and Hulu, mostly. Hulu's commercials have grown more intrusive lately, so Hulu may be on the chopping block very soon.
Agreed, I don't know how much sense it even makes from an advertising perspective. When loud commercials start, we mute the TV and ignore it, not the least of which because it's loud enough to wake the baby. We are not being exposed to the advertising.
Someone from Big Advertising a few years ago asserted that skipping commercials, even going to the bathroom during commercial breaks, was stealing, same as piracy. I find it odd that advertisers would actively discourage watching like this.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 95.0 ms ] threadI think this is probably one of the things the government can do that is unambiguously good and will touch the lives of many, many Americans. It's also an example of a market failure where there is no market for the product or service demanded. It's a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons where the gain on the TV signal is owned by no one and thus not protected. It seems like a perfect thing for the governing bodies of the country to spend time on if that's what it takes to get it done.
I do not buy your theory that this is pandering for votes. I doubt very many people will chose their elected representatives based on this issue. Instead, I think that is just a convenient rhetorical device by which you are discounting the value of this measure.
> Going further, what's the positive national interest in encouraging Americans to watch yet more broadcast television?
Personally I don't think it's in the national interest for the government to decide for its citizens what they ought to be doing with their time. Instead, it should observe what the citizens wish to do and, where appropriate and efficient, facilitate those activities.
I can buy that it's an example of market failure, but I'm not sure about the second part. According to the idealized free-market theory, this sort of stuff should be taken care of by the market just fine, by people changing the channel away from the objectionable ones, thus commercially penalizing them to the point where running quieter ads becomes the right business decision. That doesn't appear to have happened, probably because while people dislike loud TV ads enough to write to the FCC, they don't dislike them enough to actually meaningfully change their TV-watching habits (so channels with quieter ads don't really gain a commercial advantage).
The products are very differentiated, and there are only a few companies providing the products. But the differentiation is really what matters in this case.
As much as everyone hates loud commercials, channels can't actually gain significant viewership by quieting them down--no one is going to watch a drama with quiet commercials when they really want to be watching the football game with loud commercials.
This means that there's no incentive for a channel to piss off their advertisers by doing this on their own.
This is what governments are for--mandating the socially optimal strategy when the dominant strategy is something else.
Calling this a "theory" is giving it more credit than is warranted. It's largely an experienced opinion and the only kind of falsification you can do on it is see if implementing parts of it cause society to implode.
Seems like the manufacturing side might also be a market failure--it's a feature that most/all consumers want but since the market is fiercely price-competitive no manufacturer wants to pay for it. Still, it seems like a feature that Sony/LG/etc could advertise and gain a small amount of market share for.
It's not clear to me what evidence you'd use to show that this was unambiguously good, given that Americans have had the option to buy TVs with this feature for a long time, and mostly don't bother. To me, this would suggest that the assertion that it's an unambiguous good is at least questionable: if it's not worth a few extra dollars, how do we measure "good"?
There's no free rider element here, so I fail to see how this is a textbook case. The temperature at most public places isn't regulated by the government. Is it a tragedy that it's typically colder at the movie theater? No, experience tells you to dress a bit warmer. As with clothing and climate control systems, TV technology gives us the means to control our own environment: volume controls, DVRs that skip commercials, auto-leveling features, etc.
Given how much we can control/regulate our own personal environments, and even to some extent in the marketplace by having merchants cater to our preferences, do we really need this legislation and is it a priority given the current state of affairs?
It's too bad no one ever made that technology. :(
More on the article, it's nice they're doing this and all, I don't care so much since I don't watch t.v., but I don't think a simple facepalm expresses my feeling that this is about the best our government can do over the past few years when it comes to making the lives of its citizens better.
A few problems with this statement:
- Many people probably feel you are discounting some of the work the government has done over the past few years. The stimulus and healthcare (depending on who you ask) both significantly improved the lives of large sections of the citizenry. And there are probably countless minor laws that fixed various problems that weren't quite as important to you.
- I don't like the assumption that the government's primary role is to make the lives of the people better in ways it is not already doing. This leads to government expansion and often fiscal irresponsibility and economic inefficiency. To put it concretely: a lot of the things you probably believe would "make the lives of [the country's] citizens better" cost money. That is, other people's money, people who might not value these things as much as you do. The government could I'm sure give every citizen a pair of roller skates, and that would "better" the lives of the citizens, but it also has a cost.
People are free to feel I'm discounting the stimulus and the healthcare package, personally I believe those to be insufficient and a mess, whether they will ultimately really improve everyone's situation is still to be seen and debated (elsewhere). I admit I'm likely ignorant on many minor laws that were passed that are useful to certain groups of people.
My assumption on the government making lives better is not that it should come up with more ways to do so, or less ways, but that it should simply focus on the big things and not these little things, which would include giving everyone some rollerblades. I'm also aware that everything has a cost, I don't see how stating that is an argument for anything. Of course government should weigh costs and benefits before rolling out some plan.
More concretely and with respect to this specific problem, it's something the government should keep its hands out of. This problem is easily solved by a free market solution of buying a sophisticated (i.e. capable of distinguishing commercial from program) device to do this for you without failing on the obvious cases (as the top comment suggested), the lack of which suggests it's not all that important a problem in the first place. (And in fact, it seems like advertising is the more significant complaint, which is why things like Netflix and TiVo exist.) Plus a good-enough solution exists already: the mute button. If government should be providing any sort of service to better people's lives, it should be weighted such that only those services which provide the best improvement for the best costs should be implemented. Let's talk about the costs of eliminating national poverty, not making sure everyone with a scraped knee can go to the store and receive a free bandaid.
Edit: (Yes, I also realize that a failure of the free market doesn't mean there's no problem, but in this case, I think there really is no big deal and the government can stay away.)
EditEdit: On the other hand, the government nearly controls public broadcast anyway. Not straight-up censorship controlling but e.g. the recent force-upgrade to digital over analog, the list of words you can't say on public t.v. There are so many issues with this that it's hard to get a clear picture.
Personally, I would try both. Get big things in the pipeline but get as many quick wins as possible. To do as you suggest leaves you in a position of having accomplished literally nothing after years in office.
Still. Better late than never, I guess.
I hope this will work in the USA.
It contains a method of setting the loudness of a program via a volume control, which is based on some sort of average of the underlying waveform (not peak sample value), and then "recommends" that during changes between program and interstitial content (like advertisements), the same loudness setting be used.
It seems broadly similar to something like Replay Gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain), which sets volume based on an average that's intended to capture perceived loudness.
I'm not sure if this will solve things. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Marke...
It helps maintain consistent volume across commercials, different channels, and different input sources. I have a Toshiba Regza TV that's equipped with it and it's great. It was a deciding factor in the purchase of my TV.
... that's nice? Are you expecting people to call up their senators and explain the subtleties of audio perception and how the commercial that they just heard exploits the differences between perception and audio level to actually be louder than the primary content without reading any differently on a decibelmeter?
Here's my prediction: this bill will have absolutely no effect other than to make running a television station more expensive.
You can't solve this through legislation because you can't efficiently fine offenders. If you care about the loudness of commercials, stop watching television or start building a commercial solution.
1. sports -- there is no viable alternative at the moment.
2. Sometimes I just want to veg and channel surf (be passively entertained). There is no good way to do this with online services or recorded stuff.
3. Sometimes I need push infotainment because I don't know about the existence of something to actively pursue interest in it. While HN and Reddit (and so on) are rapidly replacing this niche, there are some things they just don't do well, somethings are just more interesting when presented as a video first, rather than as a link (cooking stuff comes to mind...).
That being said, having the TV on in the background is different than "still watch TV", and I agree, it is a bit annoying and sad.
Someone from Big Advertising a few years ago asserted that skipping commercials, even going to the bathroom during commercial breaks, was stealing, same as piracy. I find it odd that advertisers would actively discourage watching like this.