Wallace Collins doesn’t watch a lot of television, but he still notices how loud the volume is during the commercial breaks.”It catches you off-guard,” said Collins, environmental engineering senior. “It’s annoying.”The Advanced Television Systems Committee, an international non-profit organization that develops voluntary standards for digital television, will release recommendations to decrease the volume of commercials at its seminar on audio loudness in November, according to a Sept. 18 article on LiveScience’s Web site.”Consumers find it annoying when audio levels vary when changing channels and when watching a single channel,” ATSC’s Web site states. “Dialogue — the spoken word — has been identified as the element that audiences typically adjust their volume to.”ATSC’s Web site said achieving a volume level to match dialog is the goal.”The Federal Communications Commission … receives complaints from consumers each year [about commercial volume], but it does not currently regulate commercials,” Judith Folse, marketing associate professor, said in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille. “However, it does limit the biggest sound wave — peak volume — for broadcasting in general, so commercials cannot be any louder than the loudest point of the program.”Folse said the FCC and broadcasters are looking into the volume issue.”Suggestions include requiring commercials be only as loud as the ‘average’ not the ‘peak’ volume level of a program,” she said.Folse said advertisers make their commercials loud in order to attract consumer attention.According to the article, the new recommendations will measure the loudness of television content based on current scientific understandings of how human hearing works.”Shows and commercials would be tagged with information about their loudness that TVs and audio receivers could use to counteract the audio tricks that make commercials jump out at us,” according to the LiveScience article.Kim LeBlanc, University speech, language and hearing clinic audiology instructor, said if viewers have to raise their voices to continue a conversation, then the volume of the television is too loud.LeBlanc said commercials are not loud enough to hurt hearing, but implementing these new recommendations would make listening to commercials more comfortable.Lance Porter, mass communication professor, said because of technological inventions like TiVo, advertisers are trying all tactics to get consumer attention.”There’s a desperation in reaching consumers,” Porter said. “You see more proactive advertisements that are more attention-getting. The volume could be part of that as well.”Porter said the methods of current advertising are dying because of technology.”It’s bad for the industry,” he said. “The consumer is in control, and anytime you try to take back the control of the consumer, you’re decreasing the message you are trying to get across.”Porter said loud commercials are not effective because they influence today’s consumers to change the channel, lower the sound or walk away. He said the idea to regulate the volume of commercials could change advertising for the better.Sydney Rich, mechanical engineering sophomore, said she always changes the channels during commercials in order to avoid them. She said volume does not make an advertisement effective.—————Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]