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<ul class="summary-list"><li>The songwriter who penned "I'm Just a Bill" on "<keyword id="12561393" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="schoolhouse-rock" source="Orion">Schoolhouse Rock!</keyword>" has died.</li><li>Dave Frishberg died in Portland, Oregon at the age of 88, the New York Times reported.</li></ul>Dave Frishberg, the songwriter behind "I'm Just a Bill" on "Schoolhouse Rock!" has died, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/arts/music/dave-frishberg-dead.html">the New York Times reported</a> on Wednesday. Frishberg, who was 88, was a contributor to the beloved ABC children's educational show "Schoolhouse Rock!", which originally ran from 1973 to 1984.He died in Portland, Oregon, his wife confirmed to The Times. Frishberg's iconic song "I'm Just a Bill" explains the legislative process with vocals by trumpet player Jack Sheldon.According to the New York Times, Frishberg acknowledged that the children's tune was his "most well-known song."In addition to his work on "Schoolhouse Rock!", Frishberg was also a jazz pianist and composer who was nominated for four Grammy awards for his jazz albums.

The songwriter behind 'I'm Just a Bill' on 'Schoolhouse Rock!' has died

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A Minnesota lawmaker briefly appeared without a shirt on a live-streamed Zoom meeting.</li><li>State Sen. Calvin Bahr also appeared to be lying in bed during Monday's legislative meeting.</li></ul>Any remote worker's nightmare came to fruition on Monday for one Republican lawmaker who popped up on screen in a state of undress.Minnesota State Sen. Calvin Bahr briefly appeared on screen shirtless when the state's Office of the Legislative Auditor met virtually to hold a vote.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWW5r9QadOs">Monday's Zoom meeting</a>, which was live-streamed on YouTube, momentarily showed Bahr lying in bed with a background image of the anthropomorphic bill character from the "Schoolhouse Rock!" series on display.He was visible for no more than a second before the camera swiftly panned up and his screen turned black, displaying just his name. Bahr, a Republican, joined the Minnesota Senate earlier this year after serving in the state's House of Representatives for six years.He did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. A Minnesota GOP Senate spokesperson appeared to offer an explanation.They told <a href="https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-lawmakers-shirtless-zoom-vote-breaks-the-internet/600271624/?refresh=true">Star Tribune local newspaper</a> that Bahr had been working until 4.45 a.m. at his job as a truck driver before appearing on Zoom for the vote. They said Bahr would not be commenting himself.Bahr's Zoom blunder is not the first of its kind, nor is it the worst. In April 2021, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/canada-mp-william-amos-seen-naked-in-parliament-video-call-2021-4?r=US&amp;IR=T">Canadian MP William Amos accidentally appeared naked</a> on a parliamentary video call. At the time, he said he accidentally left his camera on while he was getting changed after a jog.

A Minnesota lawmaker cast his vote in a Zoom meeting shirtless and lying in bed

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Over the past three decades, party leadership in congress has accumulated more and more power to cut big deals.</li><li>This came at the expense of members serving on House committees and subcommittees. </li></ul>The past year has been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-shambles-failing-america-israel-ukraine-speaker-ambassadors-military-promotions-2023-10">a fiasco in the House of Representatives</a>. The Speaker of the House took weeks to secure the votes needed to take office and survived a few months before being unceremoniously ejected from his position, which led to a month of legislative time being squandered as a series of would-be Speakers failed to win over enough Republicans to bag the job. At the same time, the body has seen a wave of early retirements, with young backbenchers becoming <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jim-jordan-speaker-house-stalled-austin-scott-2023-10">increasingly frustrated</a> by the contours of the job, the constant need to fundraise, and the utter inability of everyday members to influence policy. These situations are not coincidences.Indeed, they're the reverberations of a deliberate strategy that congressional leaders have implemented over the past several decades to fundamentally change the way Congress operates, moving away from the so-called "regular order" that "Schoolhouse Rock" aficionados might be familiar with. The strategy has gradually shifted power that was once distributed throughout the membership to party leaders.It has shattered the illusion that serving in Congress empowers individual politicians to change things for the better. It has changed how the body works, and permanently. It has turned potential rising stars into disaffected, young retirees. For a while, it probably made things a little easier to negotiate. But if the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-mccarthy-enabled-his-own-downfall-in-january-concessions-2023-10">past year</a> is any indication, absent competent leadership with a broad latitude to get deals done, it has set the federal legislature on a path toward fecklessness and irrelevancy from which it might not be possible to escape.<div type="image" title="House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich acknowledges applause on Capitol Hill, Monday, Dec. 5, 1994 after his fellow Republicans officially named him to the post. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., who earlier seconded his nomination, and Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La. applaud behind Gingrich who will take over the leadership post when the 104th Congress begins in January." height="1749" width="2333" msid="105514996" hostid="261" sizebytes="495184"></div><h2>What's changed?</h2>Regular order refers to the process of legislative committees holding hearings and marking up bills before referring them to the legislature as a whole. Ostensibly, this gives committee members and leaders significant sway over what goes into these bills, and is a way for members to accumulate expertise and horse-trade even if they're rather new to serving in the legislature. Today, this is much rarer for the big bills than it was historically.Since 1996, Congress has failed to complete each step in the appropriations process on time, and as a result since that year Congress has overwhelmingly preferred omnibus-style bills. Contrast that with <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32473.html#_Toc440549020">the period from 1989 through 1995</a>, when all 13 of the appropriations bills made their way through Congress the way (I'm Just a) Bill said they would, from subcommittees to committees and then Congress as a whole.But now, party leaders negotiate large spending packages in top-level meetings, potentially dealing in committee leaders and party bigwigs, while closing the doors to the rank and file while they hash out agreements.What got us here?"Essentially, there were a series of reforms, at least on the Republican side, that began following the Republican takeover of the House and the 104th Congress, with the rise of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich," said <a href="https://my.vanderbilt.edu/alanwiseman/">Alan Wiseman,</a> the co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. "And one of the major institutional changes that were put into place on the Republican side was term limits for committee chairs and subcommittee chairs."Gingrich was deliberately trying to hollow out the power of committee chairs, rein in their fiefdoms, and accumulate power for himself and other party leaders to oversee dealmaking on major spending packages. According to Wiseman's research, a committee leader that is running the show for their fifth, sixth or seventh term is drastically more effective at getting what they want than one in their first, second or third term.By booting committee chairs before they could accrue that power, Gingrich and subsequent party leaders eliminated potential roadblocks to the will of the Speaker. The coup worked."What's happened more recently is that it's tilted more toward leadership, and toward the whole idea that you're campaigning constantly to hang on to power or to gain power," said <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/donald-wolfensberger">Donald Wolfensberger</a>, a congressional scholar at the Wilson Center. "And that has sort of thrown out the window the whole idea of regular order."<h2>A Party of One</h2>As a result, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hakeem-jeffries-early-honeymoon-house-democrats-tension-progressives-2023-5">party leaders</a> have vast influence over what happens in their chamber — powers that once were in the hands of rank-and-file membership. "The power has broadly centralized in Congress over the past few decades," said <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo20832419.html">James M. Curry</a>, a professor at the University of Utah who previously worked as an Appropriations Committee aide. "That means not just a centralization of power specifically in party leaders, but a broader centralization away from processes and ways of doing business that gave rank and file members a lot more opportunity to influence decisions."This isn't entirely bad. Curry in fact argues that it can actually be more efficient to negotiate spending deals this way."These were changes that were largely adaptations to dealing with a political environment that made legislative action more difficult, the political environment that settled in since the 1980s, or 1990s," said Curry."The move away from regular order was natural selection, this argument goes. The institution had to evolve to survive in new harsh environmental conditions caused by the media, partisanship, and financing in American politics. The current iteration of Congress requires party leaders that want to actually come to deals, and who have the backing of their party to make the necessary trades needed to come to an amicable conclusion. By centralizing power in the Speaker office, one might argue, you have a better chance of achieving a meaningful compromise. That assumes, however, that party leaders and the members that put them there would want to have a functioning government. This past year illustrated that what Congress has evolved into may not be able to function under <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-fights-confrontations-2023-mccarthy-mullin-gaetz-2023-11">unique pressures</a>, like a slim majority with an intransigent right wing. <div type="image" title="The gavel for Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is carted away by House aides following testimony by Constitutional law experts, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan, University of North Carolina Law School professor Michael Gerhardt and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019." height="3165" width="4220" msid="105514997" hostid="261" sizebytes="1731124"></div><h2>We probably can't go back. </h2>The very incentives that pushed Congress away from regular order are stronger than ever.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/fox-news">Partisan media</a>, which can punish rank-and-file members and subcommittee chairs for cutting deals with the other party, is more entrenched every day. Over the same period, lobbying and special interest groups have continued to grow in influence, and the breakdown in social interaction between members has accelerated, particularly as more and more legislator time must be spent dialing for dollars. The electorate itself has grown more polarized, and that penalizes the kind of horse-trading that had been the hallmark of regular-order-style negotiation."If you are seen even talking to somebody the other party, even if it's just socializing and talking about your family to something that," said Wolfensberger, "Oh, he's conspiring with the enemy."The country doesn't want it, the media doesn't want it, the leadership doesn't want to concede it, and by now much of the membership doesn't know how to get it. It is not entirely obvious how a dedicated group of legislators could even go about wrestling back that power from a Speaker or a party leader. Even if they did, it's not entirely clear that regular order would even work given the intense media scrutiny on anyone who deviates from party orthodoxy.It's causing some members to realize they have a better chance of advancing their policy agendas outside of the institution. There has been a wave of retirements."People are talking about it — more openly than they ever talked about it," <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/18/congress-retirements-2024-elections-00127883">Rep. Bill Huizenga told POLITICO.</a> "Like wondering, 'Is this really worth my time and effort?'"Over the past three decades, the rise of hyper-partisanship, a 24/7 media ecosystem, and declining relationships within Congress have forced the body to retool itself and put the chamber's vast powers in the hands of just a few people. It worked often enough that the transition wasn't questioned. But this year, the flaws of the current style of managing the House could not be more evident. When the people with power aren't up to the task, it can cause the entire government to break down or grind to a halt.It's not clear that it's even possible to fix this thing, anymore.

Regular Disorder: How Congress broke itself, caused chaos and misery, and why it may not be possible to go back ever again.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Sen. Bernie Sanders was captured in a photo sitting on the steps outside of Capitol Hill.</li><li>The photo caught the eyes of internet users who compared him to a cartoon in an educational song. </li></ul>Senator Bernie Sanders has become a meme once more.Known affectionately by some as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f42Zj4lEZpQ">Uncle Bernie,</a> the 80-year-old senator was captured by Los Angeles Times photojournalist Kent Nishimura sitting on the steps outside the US Capitol during <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/07/democrats-senate-reconciliation-votearama-00050222">a 15-hour Sunday "vote-a-rama"</a> to pass the Inflation Reduction Act — <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-democrats-pass-climate-healthcare-bill-manchin-biden-schumer-2022-8">a $740 billion climate, healthcare, and tax package</a>.New York City photographer Clayton Cubitt posted an apropos comparison of the photo with an image from a Schoolhouse Rock song called "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto">I'm Just a Bill.</a>" The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto">song</a>, written by Dave Frishberg and performed by Jack Sheldon, has become an educational staple since its release in 1976 —teaching children about the process a bill undergoes before it's turned into law by way of a catchy tune."I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill," the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto">song</a> begins. "And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill," the song continues, showing the seemingly exhausted animated paper roll sitting on the steps as Sanders did on Sunday. The photo comes after another meme of Sanders sitting in a chair at President Biden's inauguration in January 2021 made its rounds on the internet featuring the Senator photoshopped into a <a href="https://www.insider.com/bernie-sanders-reacts-inauguration-memes-mittens-seth-meyers-video-2021-1">variety</a> of situations.<div type="image" title="Former presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) sits in the bleachers on Capitol Hill before Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th US President on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC." height="2931" width="3909" msid="93421007" hostid="261"></div>When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7beCOs4yAw">interviewed afterward by Seth Meyers on his late-night TV show</a>, Sanders explained that he was simply "just sitting there trying to keep warm, trying to pay attention to what was going on." "Sen. Sanders has a very well-defined brand and image," Brendan Smialowski, the photojournalist who snapped the photo viral Sanders-mitten photo, told <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/23/bernie-sanders-inauguration-meme-heres-the-story-behind-the-photo.html">CNBC</a> in 2021. "He is who he is and he's comfortable in that and it's very much part of his politics.""It was a nice slice of life," Smialowski said. "It's just Bernie being Bernie."

Sen. Bernie Sanders sitting on the Senate steps leads to comparisons to a classic US civics cartoon

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Education and Justice Departments on Thursday issued new guidance on bankruptcy for student-loan borrowers.</li><li>Though "it's a step in the right direction," director of "Loan Wolves" Blake Zeff told Insider, it may not be a real fix.</li></ul>Student debt has been making headlines due to the Biden administration's one-time cancellation initiative — currently <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-judge-halts-biden-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-plan-gop-2022-10">held up by the courts</a> — and another <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-payment-pause-extended-6-months-supreme-court-2022-11">pause on repayment, until June 30, 2023</a>.But, according to Blake Zeff, director of the new documentary "Loan Wolves," there's an under-discussed solution for the ballooning crisis that impacts 43 million borrowers who hold <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/default.htm">more than $1.6 trillion</a> in debt: bankruptcy.Currently, two words inserted into a '90s law make it nearly impossible for borrowers to declare bankruptcy over student loan debt. <h2>'Undue hardship'</h2>"Loan Wolves" follows Zeff as he traces the mysterious origins of the "undue hardship" clause — a phrase included in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which outlined federal guidelines for education funding, and caused the bankruptcy complications student loan borrowers deal with today.Zeff, who worked as a senior aide for three years for Sen. Chuck Schumer and a senior policy and communications adviser in the New York Attorney General's Office before pivoting to a career in journalism, has spent the greater part of the last six years researching student loans, bankruptcy, and the "undue hardship" clause. In the existing laws around student debt, borrowers must prove "undue hardship" in order to discharge the debt through bankruptcy, which means a judge must determine the borrower has made a good-faith effort to repay the debt, but can't maintain a "minimal standard" of living and their circumstances likely won't improve. The high legal standard has long been criticized as both too subjective and too steep a requirement to make borrowers meet, including by organizations such as <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/governmental_legislative_work/publications/washingtonletter/august-2021-wl/bankruptcy-journal-0821wl/">the American Bar Association</a>. Few borrowers — even those struggling with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-borrower-cancer-treatment-bankruptcy-hearing-postponed-debt-forgiveness-2022-3">cancer</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-education-dept-withdraws-student-loan-forgiveness-appeal-bankruptcy-2022-2">debilitating epilepsy</a> — are able to discharge their student loans under the "undue hardship" standard, which is a more strict requirement than discharging other debts, including credit cards, gambling debt, or collection agency accounts.<h2>A 'step in the right direction'</h2>On Thursday, November 17, the Departments of Education and Justice <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-borrowers-get-new-path-to-discharge-debt-bankruptcy-2022-11">issued new guidance</a> regarding bankruptcy for student-loan borrowers in an effort to make overwhelming debt easier to get rid of.However, the new rules may not be the fix it promises to be. "It's certainly a step in the right direction, and I'm really glad that this is a conversation that has made its way to the president's desk," Zeff, a former politics editor at Salon, told Insider. "But, look, the devil is always in the details with these things."The Biden administration's <a href="https://www.justice.gov/civil/page/file/1552676/download">new guidance</a> seeks to clarify the factors necessary to meet the "undue hardship" standard by taking into account a borrower's current and future ability to pay, as well as a good-faith effort to make payments, as determined by Justice Department attorneys in consultation with the Department of Education.Though the new guidance may prove helpful for some, the criteria are still somewhat subjective and are not codified into law, meaning they may be disregarded by the next administration, if a law is not passed."The current undue hardship method of student loan discharge is random, arbitrary, and unfair," National Consumer Law Center Staff Attorney John Rao said <a href="https://www.nclc.org/advocates-cautiously-optimistic-about-administrations-plan-to-improve-student-loan-bankruptcy/">in a recent statement about the new change.</a> "The new guidance has the potential to provide a meaningful avenue for relief, but its effectiveness will depend on how it is implemented by the Departments of Education and Justice."The conversation surrounding the "undue hardship" clause and student loan discharge through bankruptcy has evolved in recent years, as the Biden administration has progressed on promises to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-cancels-student-loan-debt-100000-people-making-125k-income-2022-5">discharge some student debt</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-cancellation-payment-pause-borrowers-disabilities-defrauded-2021-6">address the growing debt crisis</a>.<h2>Cancelation of student debt?</h2>The administration's effort to discharge between $10,000 and $20,000 per federal borrower is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-judge-halts-biden-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-plan-gop-2022-10">currently stalled by legal challenges</a>, and its fate is being <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-administration-notifies-approved-student-loan-relief-applicants-2022-11">appealed to the Supreme Court</a>.The Department of Education's move to clarify the bankruptcy criteria is an indicator the administration is focused on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-debt-forgiveness-biden-campaign-promises-education-department-2021-6">additional elements of the student debt crisis</a>. "It's kind of good news and bad news because my sense is that one of the reasons why the president is now looking at bankruptcy is because his cancelation plan is in legal jeopardy," Zeff said, referring to a Texas court ruling <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-student-loan-debt-cancellation-blocked-court-illegal-2022-11">currently preventing the Biden administration from forgiving some student debt</a>. "And my sense is that, if the plan to cancel between $10,000 and $20,000 per borrower went through, you can kind of imagine them thinking 'Well we addressed, this let's move on,' and I wonder if the reason they're now looking at these other parts of the of the puzzle, is because of the uncertainty around the cancelation."Through the course of the film, Zeff's questioning of the clause goes all the way to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Dick Durbin, both of whom are working on student loan debt fixes, albeit in different ways. Schumer has been pushing Biden to cancel student loan debt. And last year, Durbin introduced a bill that would <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dick-durbin-john-cornyn-student-loan-debt-bankruptcy-discharge-borrowers-2021-8">provide bankruptcy as an option for borrowers</a> who have no realistic way to pay back their "overwhelming" student debt.<h2>Bigger than just student debt</h2>"This movie on the surface is about student loans, but I think it's really in many ways about our democracy more broadly," Zeff said. "Because you're really seeing how a bill becomes a law — and that it's not the way we were taught when we were in school with the 'Schoolhouse Rock' — and then in terms of trying to even track down who's behind some of these provisions, that was a whole shocking escapade. And without giving away too much, it involves some people who were never elected, and who most people have never heard of.""Loan Wolves," premiers on December 11 on MSNBC and will be available for streaming on Peacock on December 12.

Biden's step toward allowing student loan discharge in bankruptcy is 'a step in the right direction,' director of new student loan documentary says, but 'the devil is always in the details'

Kelsey Russell, a 23-year-old TikToker in New York, is on a mission to pull off what media executives have struggled to do for decades: Persuade young people to buy newspapers.The grad student posts several videos a week in which she flips through print pages of The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other legacy publishers to summarize stories. The broadsheets, blanketed with Russell's notes and highlights, are something of a nostalgic prop for her roughly 88,000 followers, some of whom may have watched their parents flip through physical papers but never touched one themselves.Before finding a news niche, Russell spent years building a TikTok following by posting restaurant reviews and travel vlogs. Today she often blends her peppy commentary on news she thinks <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/student-explains-news-gen-zers-improve-media-literacy-2023-10">young people care about</a> — such as healthcare and climate — with lifestyle content. In a November post, for example, she began by showing off <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@kelscruss/video/7298911740899642667">her ribeye steak dinner</a>, before diving into an Athens Banner-Herald article about criminal-justice reform. "The newspaper is such a slay," a user commented on one of Russell's August videos where she talked about bombs in Syria.Persuading young adults to pay for the news is a daunting task. Fourteen percent of US adults in a September <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=23-11-15%20Package:%20Social%20&amp;%20News,%20News%20Platform%20Fact%20Sheets%20GENERAL&amp;org=982&amp;lvl=100&amp;ite=12925&amp;lea=2929728&amp;ctr=0&amp;par=1&amp;trk=a0DQm000000a5CTMAY">survey from the Pew Research Center</a> said they regularly get news from TikTok, up from 3% in 2020. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, that number jumped from 9% to 32%."News" on TikTok, however, rarely comes from mainstream outlets like The Washington Post or NBC News, both of which are trying to build audiences there. The app's recommendation algorithm rarely pushes users toward these accounts, an August study from <a target="_blank" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448231192964">researchers at Northwestern</a> determined. "We find almost no evidence of proactive news exposure on TikTok's behalf," the study concludes.Instead, young people on TikTok learn about what's happening from a hodgepodge of alternative sources, from commentary accounts like Russell's, to non-news influencers who occasionally dabble in current events <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/johnny-depp-amber-heard-social-media-defamation-tiktok-case-rcna25430">when they enter the mainstream</a>, to posts from people purporting to offer on-the-ground videos from breaking news events like a war or protest.On TikTok's recommendation feed, there is little distinction between a report from ABC News and a rant about that report from a lifestyle influencer. That chaotic democratization is by design. A TikTok representative told Business Insider that the company treats all accounts the same when it comes to policing misinformation and promoting content. What happens when a generation of Americans gets its news from an infinitely scrolling video app? What happens when the 24-hour news cycle collapses to a 24-second news cycle? In conversations with more than two dozen TikTok users, creators, researchers, and other media stakeholders, it became clear that Kelsey Russell filming herself flipping through the paper at her kitchen table is part of a paradigm shift. There are the high-stakes financial repercussions: TikTok's growing news influence could further batter an already severely wounded media industry. Then there's the potential dramatic effect on an informed republic. The app's ability to provide accurate information on current events is being tested in real time, with conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war stretching TikTok's <a target="_blank" href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/our-continued-actions-to-protect-the-tiktok-community-during-the-israelhamas-war">content-moderation bandwidth</a>."Platforms don't seem to be that interested in making a space for news," said Nick Hagar, a coauthor of the Northwestern report who now works as a data scientist at The New York Times. This "new dynamic," he said, is "going to impact what people see and what people think of as important."<h2>Influencers read the news so their followers don't have to</h2>One of the core pillars of TikTok's news ecosystem is what you might call the "news influencer" — creators like Russell who distill and interpret the news for their followers. Though they're usually not affiliated with the outlets they talk about, these people may actually serve as better spokespeople for the industry than journalists at traditional publications. Some users told BI they found TikTokers more authentic and relatable than journalists, whom they believed had built-in biases tied to politics or corporate owners."I really liked this idea of somebody who's a generalist giving me my news rather than somebody who's always a specialist," said Tejas Sekhar, a 24-year-old medical student in Chicago. "I feel like sometimes that hits closer to home in terms of what I can glean from it that's relevant to my personal or daily life." "What I'm providing people is a near-peer model of education," said Russell, who wants to parlay her master's in sociology and education policy into a job that mixes entertainment with media literacy (much like what she does on TikTok today). "Somebody that looks like you, that talks like you, that acts like you, that is around your age, is able to explain a topic that you might not be able to understand."The share of US adults under 30 in Pew surveys who said they trusted information from national news outlets fell to 56% in 2022 from 62% in 2016, with trust in local news outlets falling to 62% from 71%. By contrast, trust in information from social media rose to 50% from 44%.Traditional media brands that have been successful on TikTok often build their videos through individual reporter personalities. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/the-washington-post-tiktok-account-has-a-surprisingly-popular-2019-6?_gl=1*b0ubkd*_ga*ODgyMDIyOTc4LjE2MzEwMjI2MTY.*_ga_E21CV80ZCZ*MTcwMTI2NTIxOS4xNjkyLjAuMTcwMTI2NTI2Ny4xMi4wLjA.">The Washington Post</a>'s Dave Jorgensen, for example, did an entire video series around working from his apartment during a pandemic, while Jack Corbett of "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/planet-money-shares-strategy-for-podcast-radio-content-on-tiktok-2020-11">Planet Money</a>" also filmed TikToks at his home using a bedsheet as a green screen.For TikTok's emerging class of news influencers who have created their own niche, reading traditional media is still very much a part of their daily habits, even if it's absent from some of their followers' media diets.With 3 million followers, Vitus "V" Spehar's @underthedesknews account is particularly effective at bridging the divide between traditional media and TikTok news. The 41-year-old describes their role on TikTok as a news communicator and civics explainer — a blend of Stephen Colbert, an after-school special on PBS, and "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgVKvqTItto">Schoolhouse Rock!</a>"Spehar's videos often include screengrabs from news articles to help credit sources when talking about topics like Sam Altman's temporary ousting from OpenAI or a House ethics report on Rep. George Santos. Spehar says they monitor anywhere from 12 to 15 news sources with the goal of finding stories that haven't become oversaturated.A.B. Burns-Tucker, a 34-year-old recent law-school grad, has a similar approach to her legal commentary account @iamlegallyhype. She broke into TikTok news after posting a video in which she tried to explain what was happening in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@iamlegallyhype/video/7062015965806234926">the Russia-Ukraine war</a> to her followers as if she were talking to friends. The video took off, and she now walks through topics like an Israel-Hamas cease-fire or Mike Johnson's election as House speaker to an audience of about 700,000 followers."Your post is the only way I fully understand what's happening," one user commented on her October video about the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@iamlegallyhype/video/7295425857789758763">Israel-Hamas war</a>. "Translators like you are so important," another user wrote.Burns-Tucker, like Spehar and Russell, leans on professional news outlets for sourcing, even if her videos make it seem as if she's speaking off-the-cuff. "Any TikToker who is doing news communication has to have respect for traditional media," said Spehar, who has done freelance work on TikTok for outlets like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. "You don't have to like all of it. But you've got to find one piece that you do like and recognize that that is what's giving you power."Not all TikTok news influencers cite their sources, of course. As has long been the case with other platforms, sensational retellings of the news that omit sourcing details are often the most popular."Welcome to ridiculous shit going on around the world right now," a TikTok creator named <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@davidjustinn/video/6877654368087215365">David Justinn</a> with about 9 million followers said in a late-2020 video. "A frozen dragon was just discovered in Canada," he notes. The video garnered about 31 million views and about 6 million "likes." And on hot-button issues like the Israel-Hamas war, for example, some creators have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@lostmymarblesagain/video/7300429846939798826?q=brittany%20broski&amp;t=1701205210882">felt pressured</a> to offer opinions on the matter even if they lack expertise, leading some to distrust information from the app.Even though Pew's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adults-under-30-now-trust-information-from-social-media-almost-as-much-as-from-national-news-outlets/">research</a> showed that US adults broadly distrust information found on social media, TikTok faces an uphill battle given its resonance with younger adults who are more inclined to trust social apps. The company said it enlists fact-checking partners globally to help verify claims about misinformation. But other social apps have had similar partners and have failed, sometimes spectacularly and <a target="_blank" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/">dangerously</a>, to serve as effective news conduits. A 2020 Pew report found that US consumers who turned to social media for news tended to be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/fall-2020/americans-who-get-news-mainly-on-social-media-are-less-knowledgeable-and-less-engaged">less informed</a> on topics like politics or the COVID-19 pandemic than their counterparts who engaged with traditional media like radio or news websites."I am worried and have a fear that the fragmentation that we see is going to cause problems for the body politic. That maybe people will pay less attention to politics and to traditional news and go off into their own corners on their own 'For You' page," said Gerry Lanosga, the director of the journalism program at Indiana University in Bloomington. "To survive," he said, traditional media "has to be less traditional, of course, but needs to figure out a way to find inroads into these platforms, exist on them, and even thrive in them by making news products that are more obtrusive to people and interesting."<h2>Some prefer TikTok news that cuts out influencers and traditional media entirely</h2>Some users steer clear of news commentary altogether, preferring to get information from on-the-ground, "citizen journalism" footage of live events or firsthand testimonials. These videos, which can be difficult for a casual TikToker to authenticate, are nevertheless often viewed as more genuine or authentic than information delivered by a traditional journalist."Being able to see into someone's day-to-day and having them tell a story does feel so much more trustworthy or real than something that feels so far away," said Sanya Chaudhry, a 25-year-old TikTok user in Toronto. If there's a way traditional media could make news "feel real," she continued, "like it's real people telling the stories on the ground, if they can find a way to make it more personable, maybe that's a way that more people can get engaged with it."And challenging as these videos are to verify, some TikTok users told BI that they believed the app had built-in tools to keep bad actors in check. The app's community of users can turn to features like the comments section of videos, video stitching, and dueting to call out videos that contain misinformation, they said."There's this kind of peer policing community that exists within TikTok, especially for things that are related to social and political matters," Sekhar said. "Sometimes creators will call each other out and say, 'Hey, that's actually incorrect, because of this.'"Other platforms such as Reddit and X, formerly Twitter, have leaned on community features to help identify misinformation, with mixed results. A Bloomberg review of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-israel-hamas-war-misinformation-twitter-community-notes/">X's "Community Notes"</a> in November found that the feature struggled to keep up with a relentless volume of misinformation about Israel and Gaza, with moderators taking more than seven hours on average to append corrective notes to false posts. In social-media time, that may as well be seven years.<h2>All the news that's fit to rizz: How the media industry can use TikTok</h2>There is one form of traditional news media that TikTok is proving useful for, and it happens to be the type of journalism most crushed by the news industry's shift to digital: local journalism. "TikTok is a better place for local stories than national because people log into social media to look at content specifically tailored for them," said Matt Shearer, a Boston-area reporter who helped launch WBZ NewsRadio's TikTok account. The company won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for innovation based on its work on the app this year. "Any time I post a video about a small town in Massachusetts, everybody in that small town and the surrounding towns shares that," Shearer said. "The only way that radio is going to continue to flourish is if you have programmers and news directors who are brave enough to innovate, and try something a little different," Shearer said. "Nothing should be formulaic."Other <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-radio-djs-use-tiktok-find-new-listeners-2022-11?r=tiktok-music-lp">radio hosts</a> like iHeart's Jeffrey Ramsey in Denver or Shannon Burns in Canada told BI in November of last year that they had successfully used the app to draw in a broader audience.But so far, these local journalists and a handful of savvy creators at national brands have been exceptions to the rule.And as vibrant as TikTok's news ecosystem is, the app hasn't done much to help the news industry make money. Publishers aren't holding their breath that it will.News has long been a major headache for platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and it's a uniquely controversial topic for TikTok, which has a China-based owner and is under immense scrutiny over the way it handles the flow of news and other information. TikTok, which operates more like an entertainment platform akin to YouTube or Netflix than a social network like Facebook, can try to avoid some of the mistakes in news delivery that its predecessors flubbed. Ultimately, it may end up re-creating the same information bubbles that plagued social-media apps throughout the 2010s, but this time for Gen Z.For news publishers, betting on the app as a source to make money would be a mistake, even as TikTok gobbles up more and more user attention time, said Brian Morrissey, who founded the media newsletter <a target="_blank" href="https://www.therebooting.com/">The Rebooting</a> and was previously the president and editor in chief at Digiday. Unlike Google or Facebook, where links to news sites can fuel publishers' ad revenue, linking is almost nonexistent on TikTok. It's a closed ecosystem with limited monetization options, and TikTok hasn't expressed any interest in prioritizing professional publishers. The company also usually doesn't pay publishers for their content, though it is testing an <a target="_blank" href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/pulse-premiere">ad-revenue share program</a>."The idea of depending on platforms for ad revenues is a nonstarter," Morrissey said. "The idea that these tech platforms will help news publishers in any way, shape, or form to me would be a ridiculous bet."But persuading US teens who by one estimate spend an average of <a target="_blank" href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/512576/teens-spend-average-hours-social-media-per-day.aspx">4.8 hours a day</a> on social media to log off of TikTok and go directly to a news website they increasingly distrust is also a long-shot bet.Kelsey Russell's advice to the industry is to imitate what she and her TikTok peers have done intuitively: Make the news relatable. Like any TikToker's, her videos are drawing eyeballs away from the very news organizations she hopes to promote. But her approach could also offer a model for how those news organizations can win over the next generation of consumers."Any time that you can bring in the younger voice, you can bring them to the table, you can make them visible, that's what people want," Russell said. "You've got to meet the people where they are."<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/dan-whateley">Dan Whateley</a> is a senior media reporter at Business Insider covering TikTok and social media.

Gen Z has discovered a whole new source for news

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">US Air National Guard/Staff Sgt. Joshua HortonTech. Sgt. Rudy Parsons, 123rd Special Tactics pararescueman, and his search-and-rescue dog, Callie, exit a UH-60 Black Hawk as part of Callie's familiarization training at the Boone National Guard Center, Frankfort, Kentucky, November 29, 2018.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>After deploying in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, members of the Kentucky Air National Guard realized the service needed a better search-and-rescue capability.</li><li>Eight years later, the Kentucky Air Guard's 123rd Special Tactics Squadron got Callie, the <keyword id="6354810" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="defense">Defense</keyword> Department's first search-and-rescue dog.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>In 2010, airmen from the Kentucky Air National Guard deployed to Port-au-Prince, the capital and most populous city of Haiti, in response to a magnitude 7 earthquake that impacted millions. "With the destroyed airfields, it was difficult for many government organizations to land aircraft and provide assistance," said Master Sgt. Rudy Parsons, a pararescueman with the Kentucky Air Guard's 123rd Special Tactics Squadron. The airmen were able to get on the ground and assist in clearing the airfield thanks to their special capabilities, but they soon faced more complications."Local sources were telling people that there was a schoolhouse that had collapsed with about 40 children inside," Parsons said. "A team of special tactics airmen went over and started looking through the rubble, just carrying these rocks off, looking for these missing kids. A few days into the search, (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) was finally able to land. They brought a dog to the pile and were able to clear it in about 20 minutes. There was nobody in that pile.""It had been a couple days of wasted labor that could've been used to help save other lives," Parsons continued. "It was at that time that we kind of realized the importance and the capability that dogs can bring to search and rescue. Every environment presents different difficulties, but it's all restricted by our human limitations. Our current practice is: Hoping that we see or hear somebody."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">US Air National Guard/Staff Sgt. Joshua HortonCallie, a search and rescue K-9 for the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron, during an exercise at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, July 17, 2019.</div></div></div>In response to scenarios like the Haitian earthquake, Parsons spearheaded a new approach, developing the squadron's Search and Rescue K-9 program. The effort, launched in 2018, is designed to increase the capabilities of disaster response teams in locating and recovering personnel through the use of specially trained canines.After several months of preparation, the unit acquired its newest member, Callie, a 26-month-old Dutch shepherd, making her the first search-and-rescue dog in the Department of Defense. She has now earned multiple qualifications to accommodate the specific skillset of the 123rd STS, including helicopter exfiltration and infiltration, mountain rescue (rappelling plus ice, snow and alpine maneuvers), static line and freefall parachute insertion."Callie is trained in live-find," Parsons said. "She goes into wilderness, collapsed-structure or disaster situations. She's trained to detect living people, find them, and alert me when she's located them. We react accordingly, mark the spot and begin the extraction of those people."The unique function that we can provide by developing Callie is that we can get her to places that nobody else can get to," Parsons added. "That's the biggest benefit that we really saw value in. In the situation like the earthquake in Haiti, we can get her in there, and those days in difference could be the difference in somebody's life."Before Callie's introduction to the unit, the method of search and rescue in urban settings involved probing and digging with drills and cameras. According to Parsons, this slow and sometimes unreliable method only added tools, weight and difficulty to the process.

Meet Callie, the US military's only search-and-rescue dog

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The CALM Act banned excessively loud television <keyword id="25225" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="commercials">commercials</keyword>, but it doesn't apply to streaming TV.</li><li>Consumers lodge thousands of complaints annually about loud commercials, and they're on the rise.</li><li>The <keyword id="160638" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="FCC">FCC</keyword> almost enforced the act twice in the past decade. Audio engineer experts are trying to fix it.</li></ul>On July 1, 1941, New York's NBC station <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-the-first-commercial-in-tv-history-bulova-watch-2016-7#:~:text=On%20July%201%2C%201941%2C%20the,go%20into%20effect%20July%201.">made history</a> by airing the world's first television commercial.With about 4,000 televisions in the region at the time, audience-wise it was not all that different from paying a guy to yell about a product in Times Square. The ad for Bulova watches cost $9 and ran for 10 seconds. But the world changed forever.A decade year later, in 1954, a similar moment occurred in the annals of television history. The Federal Communications Commission got its first consumer complaints about loud commercials on television.Needless to say, it's pretty much all gone downhill since.The pandemic has forced people to spend more time in front of the television than they have in ages. Simple questions like "Is it just me or are the ads way louder than 'Jeopardy!' every night?" provoke evocative answers. Casually asking people if they've experienced loud commercials yields one of two general responses: "It's so annoying!" and "It's way worse on my streaming TV service."If you're hearing things, you're not alone: the four-month period from November 2020 to February 2021 saw FCC complaints of loud commercials up 140% compared to the same period a year ago, more than double the volume of complaints.There is a law on the books - the <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials">CALM Act</a>, passed in 2011 - that is supposed to rein in loud commercials. But the FCC hasn't done any enforcement on it in the better part of a decade.Most significantly of all, for the people angry about explosively loud ads on streaming, there's absolutely nothing the FCC can do about that even if they were enforcing it. What's more, it's not entirely clear there's any way to do anything about that even through Congress.<h2>The CALM Act is supposed to regulate loud commercials but the FCC hasn't enforced it</h2><div type="image" title="Anna Eshoo Sheldon Whitehouse loud tv commercials" height="1667" width="2500" msid="81725985" hostid="261"></div>The story goes that Rep. Anna Eshoo wrote the CALM Act <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-dec-13-la-ol-calm-act-nixes-loud-tv-commercials-20121213-story.html">after a loud television commercial interrupted dinner</a>, which may be the single best argument for being an elected member of Congress I have ever heard.It cascaded through the legislature, passing the Senate unanimously and the House in a voice vote before then-President Barack Obama signed it. Eshoo <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704008704575638850947058366">remarked at the time</a> it was the most popular piece of legislation she had ever introduced in Congress.The CALM act is actually fairly simple; it doesn't say "commercials must be this loud" and it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of how to measure that or enforce it or what consequences shall befall an operator who violates it. It's fairly clever: <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1084/text">all it actually says</a> is that broadcasters and cable operators have to abide by the A/85 standard approved by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, and that the FCC has to enforce that.A/85 is essentially an intricate, <a href="https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Techniques-for-establishing-and-maintaining-audio-loudness-1.pdf">72-page technical document</a> that gets extremely specific about how things should sound. It's not written for most of us to understand. But it does set acceptable bounds for the soundscape of television.The experts wrote A/85, and Congress passed a law that said A/85 is mandatory, so Congress doesn't have to learn about audio and the problem gets solved.It's a smart approach, because Congress is home to lawyers, doctors, activists, and people with all manner of expertise, but conspicuously no audio engineers, and the Advanced Television Systems Committee is understandably full of them. Congress took a standard that industry professionals had approved, and simply started requiring it.A/85 required the average loudness of a commercial should be about as loud as the dialnorm, or the average dialogue level of a show. Because commercials can appear on your screen through a number of different ways from a number of different sources - such as being inserted by the local station or television provider, or embedded with the content itself - a standard for the whole system, top to bottom, at least formalizes the acceptable volume.After an initial surge in complaints about loud commercials to the FCC following the Act's passage and implementation, the bill largely had the desired impact, with complaints leveling off after a few years."FCC data I've seen shows consistent annual decreases in complaints since 2014," Eshoo told Insider. "If that trend has changed, investigations are warranted."The past several months show complaints on the rise, according to an Insider analysis of <a href="https://opendata.fcc.gov/Consumer/CGB-Consumer-Complaints-Data/3xyp-aqkj">the FCC database of complaints</a>. Should the current rate hold, 2021 is poised to be the worst year since the initial rollout.All that said, on a practical level, the CALM Act is not enforced.There is no pipe exiting a cable company that says "out" and there is no meter on that imaginary pipe that says "too loud." In reality, large stations and providers were <a href="https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2011/12/articles/a-summary-of-the-fcc-rules-implementing-the-calm-act-to-regulate-loud-tv-commercials/">supposed to spot-check once a year</a> during the first two years of the rollout, doing 24 hours of monitoring over a seven-day period. If they found a problem, they were supposed to tell the FCC. You will be positively shocked to discover that only two small stations asked for a waiver while they fixed issues they found.And since then? The FCC doesn't audit stations. The agency will only investigate in the event that a pattern or trend emerges based on consumer-submitted complaints. From 2012 to 2019, consumers submitted 47,909 complaints to the FCC about loud commercials."In 2013, the Enforcement Bureau sent letters of inquiry to two separate companies addressing potential violations of the CALM Act and associated regulations," an FCC spokesperson told Insider in an email, drawing from a 2020 letter from <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-366308A1.pdf">FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai</a> responding to <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-366308A2.pdf">questions</a> from Eshoo. "There were no violations found in either case and there are no public documents associated with these letters of inquiry. Since the 2013 letters of inquiry, the Enforcement Bureau analyses have not uncovered any pattern or trend of complaints supporting further inquiry."That is to say, the sum total of FCC enforcement on disproportionately loud commercials in the decade since the CALM Act has amounted to two letters - and no enforcement.<div type="image" title="Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Ajit Pai arrives at a FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington February 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas" height="604" width="800" msid="81725986" hostid="261"></div>In 2014, the FCC did update their technical standards to address a clever workaround that some commercials had discovered. Basically, if the average volume of your commercial has to be on par with the average volume of the program, then you could hypothetically craft a 30-second advertisement that is 15 seconds of silence and 15 seconds at twice the volume of the program and technically not violate the standard, as you've technically maintained the average. The 2014 update discouraged this.Despite thousands of complaints per year, the FCC has not discerned the kind of "pattern or trend of complaints" to support further inquiry.The FCC declined to answer Insider's questions regarding what precisely would qualify as a pattern or trend of complaints, whether the recent rise in complaints would qualify as a pattern or trend, or a question regarding the number of people working on CALM Act enforcement at a given time."If CALM Act-related complaints are increasing, the FCC should analyze the complaints to understand what is driving the shift," Eshoo said. "If an analysis of the complaint data shows a pattern of legitimate complaints against specific companies, the FCC must investigate those companies. If the Commission finds violations through its investigations, it should bring enforcement actions."Increased enforcement could stymie the surge in complaints. However, as streaming television rises and cords are cut, more and more Americans are getting their television from services that are not covered by the CALM act, which applies to MVPDs, or multichannel video programming distributors, which is the official legal name for cable providers.So, why not just pass a CALM Act for streaming?<h2>The government can't actually regulate streaming services</h2><div type="image" title="loud tv commercials" height="2000" width="3000" msid="81725989" hostid="261"></div>When Insider asked that question of experts in government, legislature, and the industry, the response was similar to asking "Why not legalize civil unions for leprechauns" or "When will the Federal Aviation Administration crack down on Pogo sticks," in that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about what the FCC is."The FCC's subject matter jurisdiction is communication by wire or radio," said Gigi Sohn, a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law &amp; Policy. "The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction over devices.""Neither the FCC nor the courts have ever found that the agency has jurisdiction over Internet applications, content and services."The streaming landscape is vastly different from television. It may look like television, but it's legally something else entirely, and while the offerings of a virtual over-the-top service may look nearly identical to the offerings of a traditional cable television service, legally it's completely different, and not under the regulation of the FCC.Streamers such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Youtube TV, FuboTV, Sling TV, and Hulu with Live TV may look aesthetically similar to a cable package, but from the perspective of the FCC, you may as well ask them to regulate your toaster. The FCC simply lacks jurisdiction over streaming services.One side effect of this lack of jurisdiction is that for loud commercials, the FCC can't do a thing. And the agency can't address any of the other anxieties of modern streaming, including local blackouts, delivery issues, billing, usage caps, content exclusivity, bans, or any of the other policies enacted by fiat by the largest media companies on the planet.Toward the end of the Obama administration, niche virtual streaming services sought classification as MVPDs. The companies - Pluto TV and Sky Angel - wanted the <a href="https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60001039056.pdf">FCC to expand the definition of MVPD</a> to include streamers like them, arguing that they should be under the FCC's direction. In 2014, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler supported the move and the FCC began considering the shift."They determined the benefits that accrue to them justified the FCC oversight," said Sohn, who was working for Wheeler at the time.<div type="image" title="fcc chairman tom wheeler" height="2728" width="3952" msid="81725993" hostid="261"></div>But the move to expand the definition was opposed both by legacy MVPDs, as well as larger streaming companies, <a href="https://www.nexttv.com/news/amazon-warns-fcc-about-ott-redefinition-144188">such as Amazon</a>, which did not want the FCC encroaching on their business, with the main fear being that any regulation would open the door to further regulation.Proponents of the change needed three of the five commissioners of the FCC to approve it."We didn't have the votes," Sohn said. The <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/fcc-invites-public-comment-updating-definition-multichannel-video-programming-distributor">move never went through</a>.Commissioner <keyword id="1702548" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ajit-Pai">Ajit Pai</keyword>, <a href="https://nscreenmedia.com/fcc-commissioner-says-no-to-ott-mvpd-regulation-change/">who opposed the move</a>, shortly after became the FCC chair, functionally killing the proposal. Last year there was <a href="https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/tv-networks-want-fcc-to-reexamine-ott-regulation">some movement from network affiliates to reconsider it</a>, but for the foreseeable future the virtual streaming services are unregulatable, and part of that means they can run commercials however loud they please.While there is nothing to stop the FCC from adapting a definition of multi-channel video provider that would include the virtual providers, or even streaming services, the result would likely be a massive lawsuit that they would probably lose very badly.In order for the FCC to have any authority over streamers, Sohn said, Congress would have to pass a law."I think this is a huge fight that might happen some day," she said. "It'll be a battle royale. Streaming services don't want to be regulated."However, the difficulties that Congress faces in regulating streaming television doesn't mean erratic commercial volumes on streaming is going to be a problem forever.<h2>The small committee you've never heard of that might actually end loud annoying streaming ads</h2><div type="image" title="watching tv snack" height="2663" width="3995" msid="81725995" hostid="261"></div>When Congress passed the CALM Act, they passed a law that essentially took an existing audio industry standard and instructed the FCC to take the necessary steps to enforce that standard.Right this moment, the Audio Engineering Society is designing a new audio standard for streaming television.<a href="https://www.aes.org/aes/davidbialik">David Bialik</a> is a systems engineer and the co-chair of the Audio Engineering Society's Technical Committee on Broadcast &amp; Online Delivery. If you've never heard of them, you've definitely heard them. This is the group of audio engineers who design the standards for much of how America's media diet sounds.The reason you change the channel and one isn't materially louder than another, or if you've gone to a concert and not seen drastically different sounds between sets - all of that is genuine scientific work agreed upon by pros and at times set as standards.And those standards may be the ticket to a better experience on web-based streaming.The process by which an idea becomes a standard is not entirely like the serpentine process by which a bill becomes law. Think of it as a version of the Schoolhouse Rock song "I'm Just A Bill," but instead of a bill it's an intricate technical document, instead of congressional committees it's a technical committee of audio experts, and in lieu of congressional votes it's approval by the broader audio committee.The equivalent of the presidential signature that makes it "law" is a vote that elevates the technical document to an official Standard, a move that in A/85's case was carried out by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, but other standards go different routes.Right now, the Audio Engineering Society's technical committee is working on a new technical document that would address loudness on streaming services. And if it works, the issues of variable volumes on digital television could be solved without Congress at all."My hope is to see this released within the next 4 to 5 months," Bialik told Insider. The gist is that programming material will come with loudness controls within metadata, indicating precisely how loud programming should be. They're now getting comments from the 90 members of the committee. "It is our hope that our work gets elevated to a standard.""This isn't something we're taking lightly," he added. The bigger players have good reason to play ball, namely because a unified consumer sound experience is good for the field as a whole."You want your content to be the same level as everyone else's, on a level playing field," Bialik said. A user touching the volume knob is bad. "When you invite the audience to touch the volume knob, you invite them to touch other knobs, too."Despite the many issues, Congress has been mulling an update to the 1992 Cable Act, which was the last major overhaul of the cable system. Needless to say, in the intervening years the landscape of television has changed somewhat, and to that end Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and Democratic Rep. Eshoo jointly introduced the Modern Television Act of 2019.There's little consumers can do outside of sending in official FCC complaints, or even just complaining about it on social media. In fact, those techniques are genuinely effective."I periodically hear from constituents about the annoyance of loud ads on streaming services and that worries me. I've also seen complaints on social media," Eshoo said."Right now, I'm examining how large of a problem it is. If there is a real problem that we see beyond anecdotal reports, I will certainly consider legislation to address it."

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