While I’m naturally in the Suderman-Szoka camp on the issue of Nanny Statism, Drum has persuaded me on this one with the strength of his footnotes. If it takes jackboots to stop it, then so be it. I don’t really care whether volume regulations are liberal or conservative or trample the Bill of Rights or whatever.
The ads are loud even at the best of times, but they’re really loud when you’ve already turned up the volume just to hear the show itself.ĢThis is an issue, like the Do Not Call registry, that transcends politics. The worst for me is 24, which I have to crank up in order to hear the hoarse stage whisper that Kiefer Sutherland affects in his Jack Bauer role. 1 This suggests to me that it never will unless the industry is pressured into doing it.ġA shortcoming, by the way, that’s made worse by the artistic decisions of certain shows.
ANNOYING LOUD COMMERCIALS TO GET SCRUTINY TV
Laring TV commercials have been an obvious and fixable problem for several decades and no “basic harmony of interests” has yet manifested itself. (Of course, users really bothered by noise, but unwilling to give up TV, would probably much rather have a dynamic market for TVs with volume moderating features than rules that dull the din of commercials alone.) But even if most ads are commercial, so what? If the government is going to protect us from “noisy or strident” commercials, why not all “noisy or strident” programming? Even the most annoying TV ad is probably less annoying than, say, the James Carvilles of the world debating the Glenn Becks of the world. Of course, the show could be “commercial” (which, in First Amendment terms, means it would generally get only “intermediate” scrutiny) while the advertisement could be “ non-commercial”-such as a political ad. He bill does embody a recurrent presumption that it’s ok to regulate advertising in ways we wouldn’t accept for the “show” itself ( i.e., non-advertising content). Szoka notes that proposed legislation is technically unsound and subject to selective enforcement. And in the end, I think that’s far more grating and obnoxious than a little volume manipulation from advertisers on the idiot box.
It’s also worse for citizens, who develop an implicit sense that, when problems arise, the way to fix them is to beg Congress, pass a law, wait for new irritations to arise, then wash, rinse, repeat. That’s bad for government, because it gives it unnecessary power and distracts it from legitimate government activity. And if that’s too arduous, there are various technological solutions from companies like Dolby and SRS that help keep TV volumes on a more even keel.īut the larger problem is the assumption this grows out of - that government’s job is to regulate every minor annoyance out the lives of its citizens.
It’s easy enough to turn your TV off (or even live without one, as Szoka does). While they both find the longstanding practice where the ads are several decibels higher than the surrounding programming annoying, they nonetheless argue that it’s not a matter where government should intervene. Peter Suderman and Berin Szoka provide sane, libertarian arguments against the Nanny State regulating the volume of television commercials.
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