Poland

[PL] New Regulation on the Limitation of the Loudness of Advertising

IRIS 2010-2:1/29

Małgorzata Pęk

National Broadcasting Council of Poland

On 15 December 2009 the National Broadcasting Council adopted an amendment to its Regulation of 3 June 2004 concerning principles of advertising and teleshopping in radio and television programme services.

The amendment aims to limit the practice of excessively increasing the volume, as well as the violent, abrupt change of sound levels during radio and television advertising and teleshopping spots in comparison to the programmes preceding the advertising break. Such occurrences infringe the comfort of the reception of programme services by the public and are the reason for many complaints by television viewers and radio listeners.

It has been noticed in the past that the most frequently used methods of measurement of the level of phonic electric signals during sound production for the purpose of radio and television broadcasting did not reflect the subjective reception of the sound volume by the public. The attempts to encourage the development of a co-regulation mechanism did not work. Therefore, it became necessary to establish the new regulatory obligation in this respect.

According to the amended Regulation the loudness level of the broadcast advertising and teleshopping may not exceed the loudness level of the programmes preceding the advertising break. In order to ensure that this obligation will be properly exercised the broadcaster is obliged to conduct comparisons of the loudness level of the programmes broadcast within the period of 20 seconds before the beginning of the transmission of advertising or teleshopping to the loudness level of each transmitted advertising and teleshopping spot. The annex to the Regulation provides detailed technical requirements on the aforementioned loudness measurement. The Regulation provides that the measurement has to be conducted using sound parameters in such technical conditions that fulfill the conditions of the reception of programmes by the final recipient, i.e., the public.

The technical rules of volume measurement level have been elaborated based on ITU recommendations: ITU-R BS.1770-Algorithms to measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level and ITU-R BS.1771-Requirements for loudness and true-peak indicating meters.

The amended Regulation enters into force 5 months after its promulgation in the Official Journal.