Sound Annoyance

Over the years people have really grown to depend on television for entertainment.. In early TV years commercials were live, as were many of the shows. Over the years Television programs as well as the companies that sponsored them became pre-recorded..

Now days television shows that last a hour really are much less due to the almost equal time of ads by the sponsors..

The amount of advertisements doesn’t really bother me too much. They give you a quick break for a run to the bathroom or kitchen. While other family members stay seated to watch all the sponsors of their favorite programs try to sell them everything from toilet paper to automobiles.

The television watching public has grown really used to watching these ads and is really not thinking much about it.. People frequently end up sleeping in front of the TV as they struggle to stay awake after a hard day at work to see their favorite shows. People have gotten so used to sleeping by the TV they sometimes have trouble falling asleep without it.. This never really seemed to be a problem in earlier years.

Lately there has become a problem with to combination of the television shows, advertisements and sleeping.. What is it that you ask???.

Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the ever changing volumes of the commercials. For a person like me, that mostly listens to shows while working on another project such as website updates or a hobby of some sort, the constant having to stop and change the volume is a growing nuisance The shows are always much lower in volume. As soon as a commercial comes on I have to stop what I am doing and change the volume down to a more tolerable level. Now it is getting so that you don’t have to change the volume only once when the commercial starts most of the tine you have to adjust for every commercial that comes on since all seem to be at a different levels.

I could be wrong but I thought there was a law against doing that. I am getting to the point where there are certain channels I avoid watching because it annoys me so much.

I thought the answer was getting a television that stated it had a sensor that would self adjust for the rise and fall of volume.. But for some reason on all three of my televisions this seems to be a feature that does not work.. Which makes no sense to me. How hard could it be to put a normalizing program into a one of many circuit boards that now fill our televisions.

Another problem is for those of us that have a spouse or family member that falls asleep every night at the side of their television set. It is a total annoyance getting waken up in the middle of the night by a sudden sound of a gun shot or explosion, the melody of some annoying jingle for sexual enhancement or some 800 number ad to talk to live beautiful girls that are no doubt not really beautiful at all.

Not only do these ads wake you up but then you can’t fall back to sleep until you go back down the stairs across the house to turn the volume down so that the program can no longer be heard.

Can nothing be done about this??? Not to mention what it is doing to the hearing of the person sitting in front of that loud noisemaker. And what about those little earphone devices they sell so you can listen to the television without disturbing the person next to you.. What are those loud ads doing to your ears with those??

Recently I thought it would be good to go out and get a nice surround sound system for my big screen tv.. I thought it would be nice to get that movie theater sound while watching my favorite shows.. Nope, what the surround sound seems to do is amplify certain parts of the background sounds of the movie louder than the voices. And come suddenly out of the speakers closest to where you are sitting.. Again making you jump for the volume controls..

It is enough to make you forget the words “for your viewing pleasure” all together. There is less and less pleasure watching that noise making box.

I find myself sitting in silence or listening to music on my computer while I am working quite often these days. My computer has a real nice little program that normalizes the volume of all the music I am listening to so I can actually get work done without interruption.

So the advertisers that think they are so crafty recording their ads at higher volume are beginning to hurt themselves. I am sure I am not alone in changing the channels or shutting off the TV in favor of some welcome quiet and peace of sound.

Maybe I will be looking into getting a stand alone DVR for my TV and I can record one night and watch the next day without commercial interruption..

I am guessing it will take someone suing over their hearing loss due to the problem to get the reality back into the viewing of programs on TV at normalized level..

If there happens to be any Television or advertising execs reading this.. I am no longer watching…or listening to the show sponsors. I like many other people I know if I have to turn down the volume during the ads, I turn it down low enough I don’t have to listen to any of them at all….