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CALM Act Muffles Loud TV Commercials
October 7th, 2011Is your spot FCC-legal?
| The TV Loudness War is nearly over. Advertisers, striving to be heard, were bombarding audiences with more heavily compressed [and seemingly louder] TV spots – while more viewers retaliated with the “mute” button or lobbed complaints to the FCC. Last year, Washington legislated a cease-fire. |  |
The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation [CALM] Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on December 15th last year, requires satellite networks, cable operators and broadcast stations to ensure that commercials are aired at a volume no louder than the programs that surround them. The bill’s sponsor, California Rep. Anna Eshoo, said the CALM Act was among the most popular pieces of legislation she’d introduced during her 18 years in Congress. The FCC was to begin enforcing the law one year after it was enacted, and we are just now beginning to see [hear, actually] the effects of this bill.
| For audio professionals, there’s more to the “loudness problem” than meets the ear. For decades, the broadcast industry has measured the audio level of its programming using volume unit [VU] meters and more recently, Dorrough loudness monitors. But since both read instantaneous signal voltages, they don’t measure “subjective loudness” over time, the way the human brain experiences audio. The perceived loudness of TV commercials, which tend to be more heavily compressed to make them |
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aurally denser and more noticeable, couldn’t be reliably measured by those earlier standards. And the transition to digital television and more HD programming only magnified the problem.
| So the FCC developed a new method to analyze the perceived loudness of a spot – not instant-by-instant as older meters did – but over a period of time. This new specification is measured in decibels on an LKFS scale, which stands for Loudness, K-weighed, relative to Full Scale. Broadcast engineers now need to adhere to a new Federally-mandated loudness specification: -24LKFS +/- 2db. While that may mean little to you unless you’re an audio professional, the trickle-down of enforcement has already begun to affect advertisers. |
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Broadcast and cable networks are now measuring the loudness of television spots over time and are starting to reject nonconforming content back to the spot distributors, agencies and production companies.
Two things can happen if you’re an advertiser and your content is rejected – neither of them good:
(1) Since spots typically get to the broadcasters just in time to air, any delay can put the whole media buy at risk.
(2) If you don’t have the latest metering equipment to ensure the spot’s audio is FCC-legal, one option is to just guess at lowering the overall audio level. But then you run the risk of not lowering it enough over time and having to re-do again – or being too cautious and dropping the level so low that it is too quiet compared to the surrounding program material.
| So what’s the answer? Get it right the first time with sophisticated audio metering that meets today’s Federal specifications. In our most recent audio suite upgrades, we’ve incorporated Dolby Media Meter 2 monitoring in all three of our audio studios to mix and quality-control the TV programming we produce. Dolby Media Meter 2 uses dialogue intelligence technology that automatically detects speech in the audio track, then references that to accurately and objectively calculate loudness as viewers subjectively experience it. Dolby Media Metering is a must when producing content in 5.1 surround. |
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If you are producing and finishing HD commercials on your own and don’t have the capabilities to analyze your final spot for FCC-legal loudness, feel free to contact our Operations Department at 614.777.9933. We will be happy to analyze and verify your audio track so that you can distribute your spots with confidence, knowing that it won’t be rejected by the networks.
Celebrating the 20th birthday of the world’s first website
September 8th, 2011While you’re reading this blog through your favorite browser or mobile device, you can virtually celebrate the birth of the world’s first website – which went live 20 years ago this month. Two decades later, viewing a website on the Internet is as natural as breathing air, and it’s hard to remember a time when visually-rich, instant online information didn’t exist.
WWW: Discovering fire
| While the Internet dates back to 1969, its early years were the exclusive domain of code-literate research scientists. But a little over two decades ago, Tim Berners-Lee, a software consultant at the CERN nuclear research labs in Geneva, Switzerland, submitted a proposal to secure funds for an open computer network to share particle physics research in a more “humane” form that didn’t require heavy-duty computer coding. His paper would later serve as the blueprint for the World Wide Web with innovations including HTTP, URLs and HTML. Once he had the funding, Berners-Lee built those three foundational chunks of software code — plus the server and browser software to host it and read it – by Christmas, 1990. While the invention of the Web rivals the discovery of fire, it took awhile to catch on. | 
Tim Berners-Lee created the vision for the World Wide Web and invented the software protocols that serve as its foundation. |
A slow bootup
| In August, 1991, the first website on the first web server, http://info.cern.ch, went live — but it didn’t exactly make a worldwide splash, since the only people with web browsers were Berners-Lee and a few of his colleagues at CERN. The site’s initial design was very spartan and unfortunately, no screengrabs were taken for posterity. The original site URL is still live today, although it looks very different from its humble beginnings. |
The first web server, browser and web editor — a NeXT computer now on display at CERN in Geneva. |
But it would take years for this obscure research tool to gain momentum. For mainstream computer users, the World Wide Web wouldn’t become a global phenomenon until the mid-1990s once Mosaic, Netscape and AOL popularized the software and helped put browsers on every desktop.
Businesses start to ‘get it’
| In 1995, most of us at Mills James were still asking, “what’s a website?” But later that year, we launched our first homepage, which initially was a modest presence in a “business mall” site with other companies. In early 1996, we premiered our first full website with its own domain, the Mills James Drive-In. In the mid-90’s, many businesses followed a similar trajectory and rushed to the Web with “brochureware” sites as we all began to sense the immense communications potential of this fledgling online medium. | 
Launched in early 1996, The Mills James Drive-In was our first website with its own domain. |
Later in 1996, Mills James jumped into the deep end, launching an entire “New Media” department as part of a major building expansion, staffed to build corporate websites, e-learning content, kiosks and interactive media. The rest is 15 years of digital history.
Mobilizing resources
| Today it’s a different rush, as organizations scramble to stay ahead of the online tsunami — mobilizing websites with content optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices; launching video portals, webcasts and webinars to satisfy video-hungry online appetites; and integrating websites with social networks and their growing online communities. Our Video & Interactive group is staffed with knowledgeable consultants who can help you navigate this rapidly-changing digital terrain.
It’s tough to imagine how different today’s world would be if Tim Berners-Lee hadn’t created the elements that brought the World Wide Web to life. Who knows, maybe we’d be faxing this blog to you. |
Today, organizations are scrambling to mobilize their sites – optimizing design and content for smartphones and mobile applications. |