Millions of Americans a night are frustrated with their television sets!  Not because of the programming, but the fact that they have to constantly adjust the volume control when the program goes to a commercial.  The apparent volume difference between a television program and the advertisements seem to irritate the American viewer.  Why does this happen?  Who is to blame?  Can we change this annoyance or are we stuck with it?  There has been some legislation put forward to combat this… but there are roadblocks….  What is considered loud?  How would we measure an annoyance?  Why are commercials louder than programming and why is this practice allowed?  Are the commercials really louder? Sound engineers and experts say “No”.  The public says “yes!”

Filmmakers Troy Hale and Jacqueline McLean first visited this subject when they created long format investigative news piece for Fox television.  Now they are back to dive deeper into the audio techniques, advertising practices, reasoning, legislation and irritation of this subject.  answer every question you ever had about loud commercials.