ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
The liquor industry voted Thursday to drop its decades-old voluntary ban on broadcast advertising, saying it wants to be as free to use radio and TV to promote its products as brewers and wine makers.
Reed Hundt, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, said the decision by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States ``is disappointing for parents and dangerous for our kids.''
Another critic said the industry's action marks the start of an open season of marketing liquor to children and teens. But industry officials said liquor marketers will advertise as responsibly on radio and television as they have for years in print.
``You're not going to turn on the television and see floods and floods of distilled-liquor ads,'' said Fred Meister, president and chief executive of the liquor council.
The big broadcast networks may not even give them a chance. CBS, ABC and NBC said Thursday they had no plans to change their longstanding policies against accepting liquor ads. A call to the Fox Network was not immediately returned.
The liquor group's policy makers voted unanimously to revise the industry's code of practices to permit liquor advertising for the first time since 1936 on radio and 1948 on television.
One of the world's biggest distillers, Seagram Co. Ltd., began advertising some of its whiskey brands on local TV stations five months ago in defiance of the ban.
Seagram's action triggered protests from President Clinton, the FCC's Hundt and groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
George Hacker of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest urged broadcasters to refuse to take the ads and urged the White House to persuade the industry to reinstate the ban.
But Meister said distillers think the self-imposed ban left them at a competitive disadvantage and ``people are not as concerned about the medium we use as they are that the advertising is responsible.''
The ban also contributed to ``the mistaken perception that spirits are somehow harder or worse than beer or wine,'' even though single servings of each beverage have about the same amount of alcohol.
Ron Sarasin, head of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, said he supports the distillers' right to advertise. But he said the idea that ```alcohol is alcohol is alcohol' is just plain foolish. In the real world, a gin and tonic, for example, may contain as much alcohol as almost one and one-half beers.''
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB