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Give Your Remote A Break, Loud Commercials Banned

DENVER (CBS4)- Congress passed the "CALM Act" last year but it didn't take effect until Thursday.

It stands for "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation" Act and it requires broadcast, cable and satellite companies to control the volume of their commercials.

It's been a longtime complaint among viewers, the show you are watching fades to black and then the loudness of the commercials knock you back in your seat.

About two years ago Congress started to address the problem. They believe compliance will slow going at first.

"There will be monitoring that takes place and I think that that's appropriate. Now if there is a 'major offender' then it could move to fines," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat who sponsored the CALM Act.

The idea is to control the loudness of the show and commercials at the same time with loudness being a very specific audio target.

"Loudness is volume measured over time. And so there is difficulty finding empherical data to support that to tell the operator, 'This is too loud' and so they've come up with some computer systems that measure that and actually allow us to control that better," said CBS4 Director of Broadcast Operations John Baich.

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