For parents of small children, there’s nothing quite like the relief of finally watching a baby drift off to sleep.
That moment, though, is often short-lived. For Zach and Rachel Keller, the calm was shattered by a loud streaming commercial that startled their infant daughter awake just after they had settled down to watch a show, CBS News reported.
“A lot of times, we have the volume so low that we just have subtitles running and still, the commercial ad volumes are so ear-piercing that it wakes her up,” Rachel Keller told the TV outlet.
Baby Samantha, whose father works for Senator Thomas Umberg, became the catalyst for a California bill passed in October that requires streaming platforms to regulate commercial volume so ads are no louder than the content being played.
“This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who’s finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work,” Umberg, the bill’s author, said in an October news release from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. “SB 576 brings some much-needed peace and quiet to California households by making sure streaming ads aren’t louder than the shows we actually want to watch.”
Here’s what to know about the law, which takes effect July 1.
‘California is dialing down this inconvenience,’ governor says
SB 576 will regulate the volume of commercials on streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and more.
Starting July 1, streaming platforms cannot play advertisements that are louder than the content being watched.
The legislation aligns with federal guidelines already in place for broadcast and cable TV under the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2010 and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, prior to the proliferation of streaming services.
“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Newsom said in a news release announcing, “No more loud commercials.”
The legislation, Newsom added, shows “California is dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms, which had previously not been subject to commercial volume regulations passed by Congress in 2010.”
‘It’s not popular with everyone,’ senator says
Umberg, who has three children and eight grandchildren, told CBS News that after being approached by his staffer Zach Keller, he thought it was “a good idea.”
“I think it’s one of the most popular bills in the legislature, but it’s not popular with everyone,” Umberg told the TV outlet.
Though it passed unanimously by the state Senate and cleared an Assembly committee, the bill drew opposition ahead of its final vote, according to CBS News.
Opponents, including the Streaming Innovation Alliance, argued the legislation would be hard for streaming services to implement, CalMatters reported. Streaming service ads are different than those run by cable and television networks, a representative for the Motion Picture Association, told the Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee in June 2025, according to CalMatters.
“When you choose a program on your streaming service, you’re actually calling up a digital file and advertising is paired up with that in real time,” she said, the nonprofit newsroom reported. “The streaming platform may not be able to control the loudness of a particular ad.”
Umberg, however, told The Hollywood Reporter that he has “great confidence in the entertainment industry” to find a solution.
“I have great confidence in California’s tech industry that if they can find a way to boost the volume, they can find a way to not boost the volume,” he told the news outlet in October.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Loud streaming ads woke a baby — now a California law will turn them down
Reporting by Daniella Segura, USA TODAY NETWORK / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Daniella Segura, USA TODAY NETWORK | USA TODAY Network
