California has passed a law to ban loud commercials on streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
This is great news for people who don't want to wake the neighborhood up when a streaming show suddenly turns into an aggressively loud ad for migraine medication.
Governor Gavin Newsom just signed the law and the ban goes into effect on July 1, 2026. On that date, streaming services won't be allowed to “transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany."
Newsom said that California is "dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms, which had previously not been subject to commercial volume regulations passed by Congress in 2010.” He's referring to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which barred the audio of TV commercials from being broadcast louder than the TV program being aired . California's new law makes streaming platforms comply with those same volume regulations.
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The bill was authored by State Senator Tom Umberg, who said it was inspired by "every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work." The full text of the bill is available right here .
California holds some major sway in the entertainment industry, so here's hoping that this type of legislation will come to other states. Americans don't agree on much, but everyone hates loud ads.