By Kenneth Gifford, Founder VAULT Access

Nobody likes it when a program they’re watching goes to commercial and the sound somehow cranks way up. I run an independent ad supported streaming service and I know this both as a viewer who cares about his eardrums and an operator who cares even more about the complaints.

But a bill in Sacramento that would apply federal volume standards for broadcast and cable ads to the very different world of digital streaming is the wrong way to deal with this problem. The legislation has the best of intentions, but we know where the road of good intentions seems to always lead . . . 

Streaming has totally upended the way people find and watch compelling, high-quality shows, giving viewers more options for lower cost through a huge variety of business models and technical approaches. It has opened the door for under-represented viewers and creatorsand created digital space for programming serving virtually every interest and community in the world, from Native American communities to British high society to the global black diaspora.

These smaller, independent services often depend on ad-supported options to entice new viewers or create a viable distribution path for programming that falls outside the commercial mainstream. According to recent studies, 62% of viewers prefer free, ad-supported streaming over the cost of a paid subscription and three-quarters of Black viewers now use free ad-supported options.

The legislation pending in Sacramento (S.B. 576) however, ignores this context and attempts the force the square peg of federal broadcast and cable standards into the round hole of a vibrant diverse streaming ecosystem. 

First, on broadcast and cable systems, viewers use simple and relatively standardized screens, antennas, and boxes. Streaming programming by contrast is watched – and listened to – through a constantly changing and virtually uncountable swirl of devices, speakers, wearables, headphones, earbuds, and more. From massive home theaters with Atmos sound and high-end interfaces like Roku or AppleTV to basic smart TVs with a handful of apps and built in speakers to every kind of technology in between, streaming operators face a completely different set of challenges around transmission, buffering, calibration and volume than our predecessors.

Second, while broadcast and cable ad placement and execution has historically been centralized, streaming ads are part of a vast decentralized stack operated by specialist vendors who “dynamically insert” ads into streams as they move across the internet, often completely outside the control or view of the service. In this structure, even if I contract for delivery of ads at volumes that match the underlying programming, I have no effective way to see or enforce that requirement in real time. Yet the proposed legislation would expose me and my service to massive liability risk for something I have little immediate ability to control.

The legislation’s sponsor claims streamers’ supposed ability to personalize ads means they can solve this problem as well. But that’s an apples to oranges comparison. Basic ad tailoring by small and independent streamers is nothing like the mass and hyperpersonalized data operations of the large social networks that appear to inspire the remark and has no bearing on the totally different engineering challenge of managing the audio specs of millions of real time dynamic ad placements.

Third, in the broadcast and cable world, virtually all players are large, heavily resourced engineering and infrastructure companies, used to operating in a highly-regulated environment. Streaming services, by contrast, are small, independent outfits, often run by a handful of dedicated individuals with a cultural and creative mission. Regulations that make sense for incumbent cable and broadcast companies are a bad fit for the upstarts and visionaries powering the cord-cutting revolution.

Because of these practical and technical differences, legacy commercial volume standards simply won’t work in the streaming space. Imposing them will drive many small streamers out of business as they struggle to spend money they don’t have to solve a problem they really can’t control. Others will simply block access to their programming in California rather than risk massive and unpredictable liability if their efforts to comply with the rule don’t fully succeed. Driving away affordable, high quality options serving California’s huge variety of communities and audiences isn’t what the sponsors of this legislation want, but it’s almost certainly what would result.

Instead, I urge policymakers to give us a chance to work through these issues as a streaming community. No one wants to solve this challenge more than we do – we know customers will vote with their remotes if we don’t! But a rigid one-size-fits-all legacy broadcast/cable mandate won’t get us there any faster, while depriving Californians of ad supported programming options they count on in the meantime. 

Kenneth Gifford is the Founder and CEO of VAULT Access, an independent streaming service dedicated to showcasing independent films, television, documentaries, and music from around the world.