If you’ve ever been startled while watching a show on a streaming service that was interrupted by an unreasonably loud commercial and thought to yourself, that should be illegal, soon it will be. At least in California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week signed a bipartisan bill into law that bans video streaming services that serve customers in the state from airing audio of commercial advertisements that are louder than the video content it accompanies. It goes into effect July 1, 2026.
“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 in a statement about the legislation, SB 576.
The bill was introduced because of a baby. California state Sen. Thomas Umberg, an Orange County Democrat, said he sponsored the bill because of the daughter of his legislative director, a baby named Samantha who was finally put to bed one night only to be woken up by a much louder commercial.
“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,” Umberg said in a statement.
The California law is patterned after federal law, extending the rules of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to streamers in the state. The 2010 CALM Act was passed by Congress and mandates commercials have the same average volume as the programs they accompany, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The CALM Act was also meeting a real demand. A 2010 Harris poll found 86% of respondents believed commercials were louder than shows. The law only applies to TV commercials, though, not commercials on streaming platforms, radio, or internet. The CALM Modernization Act, which would have extended the rules to streamers, was introduced in 2023 by a pair of Senate Democrats, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, but it never got a vote.
Even if your state passes similar legislation, be warned: the commercials may still sound louder, and there’s a reason why. That’s because even if commercials can’t be louder on average than the programs they accompany, they are trying to be as loud as they legally can to capture your attention in the 30 short seconds or less they have you. In other words, while a TV show might have its loud moments for effect here and there throughout a program, it’s not yelling at you the whole time like a commercial might.
“Most TV commercials are created to be loud simply so you can hear the advertisement and get your attention,” Sony says on a support page for handling loud commercials. “[I]f you are watching a program with soft dialog, when the program cuts to a commercial you will most likely hear a boost or fluctuation in the volume.”
California’s new law will be welcome news to parents across the Golden State, but if you’re really worried about waking your baby during commercial breaks in a Hulu binge session, subtitles could be your best bet.
