California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday that would limit the loudness of ads while streaming said services. This new law compels video streaming platforms to adhere to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which was originally passed in 2010 during the Obama administration. The CALM Act was designed to reduce the volume discrepancies between commercials and the programming they accompany on television and radio.
On July 1, 2026, all of this will change due to new legislation just passed. Specifically, it will stop video streaming services from passing on commercial audio that is louder than the programming users are watching. This action comes in direct response to the increasing number of consumer complaints about the prevalence of loud ads on streaming services. Most of these complaints have been leveled at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
State Senator Thomas Umberg, who authored the legislation, pointed to the idea that sparked the legislation.
“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,” – State Senator Thomas Umberg.
California is home to the headquarters of most of those same streaming services, including Netflix and Hulu. That’s where Amazon films a large number of their Prime Video original shows and movies. The law is intended to reach any video streaming service that is available to California consumers.
In his public comments after signing the bill, Governor Newsom recognized that Californians should not be subjected to booming billboards on the airwaves.
“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.
The new regulation also embodies a clear shift toward improving the viewing experience for subscribers. It’s able to do all this by stopping ads from interrupting their viewing experience of episodes and movies. Melissa Patack, the Motion Picture Association’s vice president of state government affairs, called streaming ads an “anti-competitive” proposal. She pointed out that these ads are not just one source, so it’s hard to manage the sheer number.
Streaming services are scrambling in anticipation of this shift. They must overcome the challenges of source advertisement sourcing all while ensuring that they are following California’s new law. Specifically, this ruling has the potential to be impactful outside of the state. Consumer confusion over noisy ads could lead other regions to implement similar measures to curtail this practice.