Switching channels on my TV the audio levels are all over the place. It is even worse if I am streaming stuff off the internet on my TV. Whatever happened to the CALM act? I thought it was suppose to put some controls over levels on broadcast media. Seems like it has slipped away and no one is enforcing it anymore.

It's enforced at the production level.

Might be some changes coming... In February, the FCC posted a proposed update to the Calm act. And they're gathering comments now:

FCC Seeks Comment on Updates to Commercial Loudness Rules
https://www.fcc.gov/consumer-governm...loudness-rules

The sound menu on your TV likely has a volume correction you can set per channel/input, and/or an auto gain - on/off setting along similar lines. Mine has both.

My Panasonic TV only has a single control for dynamics and it does not work very well when turned on. I have a calibrated Dorrough peak/RMS meter on my TV sound and the levels are all over the place and go from -10 dBFS to +3 dBFS just switching between two channels. Not exactly a great way to listen to the TV. Hopefully the changes in the CALM act will address these problems...

What was the content on the respective channels when you switched? Was it commercials or was it the other stuff?

If I'm not mistaken the CALM act was never written to target content that was not commercials, as the name implies; "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation".

Sometimes I do notice commercials extremely loud in comparison to the broadcast. This would most likely be the broadcast\program streaming out at levels far below the limit, and thus makes the commercials seem violently louder. There is much more aggressive engineering done with audio processing of mainstream commercials.

They were commercials (ever noticed that every channel runs commercials at the same time). One was national and one was locally produced. I though the CALM act covered ALL commercials...

I too have noticed the same thing. Watching the Dorrough meter is "interesting". Calibrated to -14 dBFS = 0dBFS.

Commercials are +6 dB louder in many cases that the program audio. No one seems to care... Least of all the TV station which are mostly automated now days with no "real" person watching levels.

I did master control for a PBS station and I DID watch the levels...back in the days before automation. Too bad everything is done to "save money" and the watching public be dam#ed.

https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/area...cials-calm-act

It sounds like governmental "double speak" to me.

It's not. It addresses a specific concern that audiences had, namely that while watching for example a movie to TV show it would be interrupted by a very, very loud commercial. This act deals with that situation, specifically.

If you switch between a quiet sensitive moment in a period drama movie set in the 1800's to a channel that happens to be playing a sports commercial it should be easy to see why there would be a discrepancy.

There are limits to what can be controlled.

It's harder now to do with all the damn digital and HDMI and all that BS but back in the day when we had real analog connections, I had stuck the "Really Nice Compressor" on the audio jacks between the cable box and the TV input. Used to work amazing for negating all that garbage.

I am noticing more that commercials are running more in sync across networks more than ever before. They know people flick through to avoid them, so conformity in the formula in this digital age is their remedy. The advertisement tactics are getting pretty bad now and will soon be as parasitic as a 50lb leech on your head, but most people won't notice, they'll just be buying more garbage.

Use an ad blocker and the volume of commercials won't bother you

To the best of my knowledge you cannot put an "ad blocker" on your TV set. I just mute the commercials...

One thing that might be happening is the mix of broadcast vs streaming. IT might look the same nowadays but in the back end the calm act is geared towards the broadcast market while streaming is the home entertainment market. TV shows would normally be mixed with the network in mind while movies get the near field treatment for down stream media but only gets the loudness normalization once it's sold to domestic syndication. (gets open blacks, ads inserted etc). The streaming platforms decided to preemptively jump onto the calm act and for example Netflix uses something a little different and every platform sort of has adopted the most common scenario even though they license shows from all over the world and genre spectrum and they do not require any specific loudness spec and from my understanding their own streaming app changes the overall level like in Spotify/YouTube.

The other things might be the confusion around the spec and how each network has its own spec while advertising just sends one ad with the most common spec. Plus almost no one understand the spec outside of the specific people mixing the show. (dialogue gating/dialogue vs overall mix/long vs short term etc) Most techs just use some sort of device that has some sort of LUFs meter that says pass or fail Ala Idiocracy style.

And also, just looking at the music world you can see how everyone and their moms is trying to be louder than the rest but still be within the Spotify spec, so im guessing that has transferred over to the advertising world.
I genuinely think that broadcasters/tech are not purposely mixing the ads higher during transmission and think is more a discrepancy of knowing the actual specs and/or workflows of the advertising mixers or something along those lines.

But its just a guess, theres some many shows, networks, workflows etc thats hard to pin point. But I did notice it watching South Park, Futurama, in Comedy Central were the ads where much much louder.