A new law in California is aimed at stopping advertisements from pumping up the volume on streaming services.
The law, which says adverts cannot be louder than the primary video content being watched, builds on a federal one that sets the volume of ads on broadcast TV and cable stations to include streaming platforms.
Opponents, including the influential entertainment industry, had argued it would be difficult to implement because streaming services do not have the same control over ad volume as broadcasters.
California is home to the headquarters of streaming platforms Netflix and Hulu, and Amazon produces many of its Prime Video shows and movies there.
In 2010, Congress pass the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to dial down the volume on TV and radio stations.
The law that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed on Monday forces streaming services to comply with the Obama-era federal law too.
The services were in their nascence when the CALM Act was passed but have since become the primary viewing option in many US households.
“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said upon signing the bill.
Existing federal law requires the federal regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to develop regulations that require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany, according to the bill.
In February, the FCC said it had received thousands of complaints about loud commercials over past several years – many regarding streaming services.
This law, which takes effect on and after July 1, 2026, prohibits a video streaming service that serves consumers in the state from transmitting the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the people are watching.
“This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work,” said State Senator Thomas Umberg, who introduced the bill.
Samantha is the daughter of Umberg’s legislative director, Zach Keller, who told him about a noisy ad waking up his infant daughter while he was watching a streaming show.
However, the Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance, which represent streaming services including Disney and Netflix, initially opposed the bill.
They said they do not have the ability to control volume settings on the devices on which their content is offered, unlike broadcast and cable TV providers.
Streaming ads come from several different sources and cannot necessarily or practically be controlled, the MPA’s vice-president of state government affairs Melissa Patack said in June.
The bill was later amended with a legal provision that would bar individuals or private parties from suing streaming services for violating the law.
Both groups remained neutral on the amended bill as a result, according to the Los Angeles Times.
