Of my many thousands of peeves with television, there are few that anger me more than commercials that are twice as loud as the program I’m watching. Holy Jesus, do I want to slowly murder the person who thought that would be a good idea. And shockingly, Congress passed legislation to do something about it.

The Senate unanimously passed a bill late Wednesday to require television stations and cable companies to limit the volume of commercials and keep them at the level of the programs they interrupt. The House has passed similar legislation. Before it can become law, minor differences between the two versions have to be worked out when Congress returns to Washington after the Nov. 2 election.

Ever since television caught on in the 1950s, the Federal Communication Commission has been getting complaints about blaring commercials. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the “apparent loudness” of commercials. So it hasn’t been regulating them. [USA Today]

Oh, that’s cool. Because I needed another reason to dislike the FCC. Seriously, the FCC came to that conclusion TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago, and never revisited that issue to see if the technology had improved enough to regulate sound on commercials. “Oh sure, we’ve gone from 16-bit video games to an age where almost every person has a handheld computer-camera-phone, but regulating sound on television programming? Come on, these people are scientists, not miracle workers.”