It has taken an act of Congress, but the volume of television commercials will finally be turned down. The FCC has been fielding complaints from TV viewers since the 1960s and now the government has taken action with a law that went into effect last week.

“Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) introduced the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), which passed both the House and the Senate — where the vote was unanimous — in 2010,” reports TIME. “President Obama signed it on December 15, 2010.”

The law requires that the commercials be no louder than the broadcasts that accompany them. It has taken two years to implement, since stations and cable operators had to upgrade their equipment.

“Surprisingly, advertisers didn’t put up much of a fight over the legislation, likely realizing how annoying their ads had become to basically everybody who owns a television,” notes the article. “It’s not clear whether turning the sound down on ads will actually hurt ad awareness, but with more of us simply fast-forwarding through commercials on our DVRs, it probably won’t help, either.”