California’s Legislature has passed a new law aimed at stopping advertisements from raising the volume on streaming services.
The new law, SB576, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, said ads cannot be louder than the primary video content that is being watched, per BBC. It builds on a federal law that sets the volume of ads on broadcast TV and cable stations.
Opponents to the law argued that it would be difficult to implement, since streamers don’t have the same control over ad volume as broadcasters do.
Multiple streaming platforms, such as Netflix and Hulu, have their headquarters in California, according to BBC.
“Californians don’t want to hear commercials at a volume any louder than what they were previously enjoying their program at,” Newsom wrote on X on Monday.
“I just signed legislation enforcing this regulation across streaming platforms,” he added.
In February, the FCC said that over the past several years, it had received thousands of complaints about loud commercials, many regarding streaming services, per BBC.
State Sen. Thomas Umberg, who introduced the bill, said, “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.”
Samantha is the daughter of Umberg’s legislative director, Zach Keller, who shared with him about loud ads waking up his infant daughter while he was watching streaming shows, per Politico.
The law passed unanimously on the Senate and Assembly floor in Sacramento earlier in October, per The Hollywood Reporter. It takes effect on July 1, 2026.
The bill text said that streaming services won’t be able to “transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.”
Was there opposition to this bill?
Initially, the Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance opposed the bill. The alliance represents streaming services, including Disney+ and Netflix, per Politico.
The groups argued that since streaming ads come from multiple sources, they are hard to control. The MPA also claimed that in-house audio engineers were already working to fix the issue and needed time to solve the problem without legal threats.
The MPA dropped its opposition after a provision was added to the bill that shields streaming services from lawsuits brought by private parties. This leaves the enforcement of the law up to the state attorney general’s office.
California’s law builds on an Obama-era federal law
In 2010, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act was passed by Congress to dial down the volume on TV and radio stations, per BBC.
The new law in California forces streaming services to comply with this Obama-era federal law as well.
When the CALM Act was passed, streaming services were in their nascence, but have since become the primary viewing option in a lot of U.S. households.
The CALM Act requires the Federal Communications Commission to develop regulations that require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they accompany, per BBC.
Could this spread nationwide?
According to Politico, since California has such a massive impact in the entertainment industry, this new law may force streamers into quieting commercials across the country.