WASHINGTON: With the year-end holiday television advertising blitz in full swing and political pitches set to swamp US airwaves in 2010, US lawmakers were taking aim Friday at loud commercials.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has unveiled separate legislation that would require television advertisements to be no louder than the programs during which they appear, and a similar proposal is pending in the House.

"The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act of 2009" would require the US Federal Communications Commission to regulate the ads' volume.

"Every day millions of Americans are barraged with abrasively loud television commercials," Whitehouse said in a statement that declared it time "to dial down to normal the loudness of these ads."

The legislation, which would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to set new rules, was unveiled with year-end holiday advertising booming and with campaign commercials ahead of the November 2010 US mid-term elections set to launch in earnest.

The proposal faces scrutiny by relevant committees in the Senate and House of Representatives, which must approve the same legislation in order to send it to President Barack Obama to sign into law.

In a June fact sheet posted on its Internet site, the FCC said loudness was subjective and that broadcasters and program producers had "considerable latitude."

"Manually controlling volume levels with the remote control remains the simplest approach to reducing excessive volume levels," it said. "The 'Mute' button on TV remote controls is also useful to 'blank' excessively loud audio."