California Is Making Streaming Ads Less Loud—Here's Why

Starting July 1, 2026, streaming services like Netflix and Hulu will have to keep their commercials at the same volume as the shows around them. California Governor Newsom signed this law in October 2025, extending rules that broadcast television has followed since 2010.

You probably know the problem: you're watching your show at a comfortable volume, then an ad blasts on and you scramble for the remote. That happens because advertisers used to turn up commercials as loud as technically possible while leaving the show at a lower level. Television rules have allowed this gap between program volume and peak loudness for years.

In 2010, Congress passed the CALM Act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act) for broadcast and cable TV. It required that commercials not exceed the average volume of the programs they interrupt. For over fifteen years, broadcast viewers have benefited from this rule. Streaming services, though, grew up in a different regulatory world. When Netflix, Hulu, and others launched ad-supported tiers, they weren't subject to the same loudness rules. The problem that broadcast TV solved came along for the ride to streaming.

California's new law closes that gap by applying the same federal standard to streaming platforms. Instead of creating entirely new technical requirements, the law tells platforms to use the measurement system that broadcast TV already uses. If a platform delivers both broadcast TV and streaming, it largely means running the same volume-control system across both.

The trickier part is actually checking that it works. With broadcast TV, regulators could sample the signal from a transmitter. With streaming, the audio can be adjusted in different places — sometimes on the company's server, sometimes on your device, sometimes in between. Getting that right across millions of viewers at the same time is genuinely difficult.

California's size matters here. When the state changes technology or content rules, companies often apply the change everywhere rather than maintain two different systems — one for California, one for the rest of the country. That's what happened with car emissions rules decades ago, and the same pattern could happen with streaming ads.

The law started as a response to something very human. A report noted that an infant was woken by the sudden loudness of a streaming advertisement. Over time, enough people complained about the problem that lawmakers acted. Broadcast TV faced the same dynamic: years of viewer complaints before Congress finally passed CALM in 2010.

For the streaming companies, the deadline is real and imminent. The technical standard is clear, the compliance date is set for July 1, 2026, and there is no ambiguity about what the law requires. What happens after — how California enforces the rule, what penalties apply, and whether the federal government eventually extends this requirement to all streaming nationwide — is still to be determined.