This NEW Law Could Solve a Major Disney+ Ad Problem

A new California law is aiming to stop advertisements from increasing volume on streaming services, including Disney+.

According to BBC News, the law says advertisements cannot be louder than the primary video content being watched. It builds on a federal law that sets similar volume limits on broadcast TV and cable stations.

While this sounds like great news for everyone, the law has gained opposition from those in the entertainment industry, who argue that it would be difficult to implement — as streaming services don’t have the same control over ad volume as broadcasters.

In 2010, Congress passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act to help control the volume on TV and radio stations. This new California law will force streaming services to comply with the federal law as well.

“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,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said when he signed the bill.

The existing federal law requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop regulations that require commercials to have the same average volume as the programs they’re played during, per the bill.

The FCC said that as of February, it had received thousands of complaints about loud commercials on streaming services over the past several years.

The new law will take effect on July 1st, 2026, and prohibits streaming services that are available in California from “transmitting the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the people are watching.”

But the Motion Picture Association and the Streaming Innovation Alliance, which represent streaming services like Disney and Netflix, opposed the bill at first. They said they could not control volume settings on the devices people stream their content, unlike broadcast and cable TV.

Streaming ads come from multiple different sources and “cannot necessarily or practically be controlled,” according to the MPA’s vice president of state government affairs, Melissa Patack.

The bill was eventually amended with a provision barring individuals or private parties from suing streaming services for violating the law, and it passed.

It will be interesting to see how this is implemented and enforced, and it could potentially lead to further laws being issued in other states. In the meantime, make sure you stay tuned to AllEars for the latest Disney and streaming news.

2 (!!!) New Disney+ Subscriber Perks Just Arrived

What do you think of this new law? Let us know in the comments. 

Post a Comment