Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), author of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, announced that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has passed final rules implementing the law. Eshoo's legislation prevents television advertisements from playing at a higher volume than the programs during which they air. Under the rules approved today by the FCC, absent a waiver, television broadcast stations, cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors are required to comply with the FCC's rules within one year.

"I'm proud to have led the charge to pass the CALM Act, which will give consumers the relief they've clamored for. TV stations now have the responsibility to turn down the volume on excessively loud commercials, and it's about time," said Rep. Eshoo. "The law I wrote is simple – the volume of television commercials cannot be louder than regular programming. Households across the country will soon get the relief they deserve from the annoyance of blaringly loud television commercials."

Loud commercials have been a top consumer complaint for decades, and are listed as such in 21 of the FCC's 25 quarterly reports between 2002 and 2009. According to a 2009 Harris poll, almost 90 percent of TV viewers are bothered by high commercial volumes, prompting 41 percent of viewers to turn down the volume, 22 percent to mute the TV, and 17 percent to change the channel altogether. In fact, before Eshoo's legislation, the official FCC policy recommended that consumers mute commercials if they find them excessively strident.

The CALM Act passed the Senate unanimously on September 29, 2010 and passed the House by a voice vote on December 2, 2010. President Obama signed Eshoo's legislation into law on December 15, 2010. For the past year, Eshoo has been working with the FCC to ensure that the rules put in place are fair for both consumers and television broadcast stations, cable operators and other multichannel video programming providers.