Slovakia

[SK] Ministry of Culture Specifies Programme Loudness Regulation

IRIS 2014-3:1/41

Juraj Polak

Radio and Television of Slovakia (PSB)

On 1 January 2014, the Decree of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic No. 468/2013 laid down the specific requirements for loudness of programme services.

On 22 October 2013, the Slovak Parliament passed an Amendment (No. 373/2013 Coll. to Act. No 308/2000 Coll. on Broadcasting and Retransmission (see IRIS 2014-1/41). Among other things, the Amendment abolished the preceding system of measuring loudness of advertisement compared to the editorial content of the broadcasting. It authorised the Ministry of Culture to issue bylaws that will set the details for a new system compatible with the recommendation R 128 “Loudness normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals” of the European Broadcasting Union. This has been implemented by the Decree of 1 January 2014.

According to this Decree’s principle, Radio broadcasters and local TV broadcasters are merely obliged to ensure that “no unjustified differences in volume level among particular parts of programme services will occur”.

National TV broadcasters - other than local ones - must follow a more detailed set of rules. In accordance with the recommendation R 128, the integrated loudness level of each programme, advertising breaks (i.e. at least two consecutive advertising spots), optical-acoustic means used to separate advertising from editorial content and other parts of programme services shall be normalised to a level of -23.0 LUFS. If an individual advertising spot is broadcast, the target loudness level must be reached in each individual spot.

The permitted deviation from the target level shall not exceed ±0.5 LU. For programmes which can technically not be normalised to an exact target level (i.e. live programmes) the permitted deviation is set to ±1 LU. The momentary loudness level difference (-400 ms) between an advertising spot and a part of the editorial programme services of at least 30 seconds shall not exceed -15 LUFS whereas the short term loudness level (-3 s) shall not exceed -20 LUFS.

These requirements, however, do not apply to different language versions of programme services, audio descriptions and the original audio track of the programme broadcast simultaneously with the main Slovak audio track.