Stuart Elliott in America. (Opinion).(NBC bows ads for distilled spirits only to have to withdraw them)(Brief Article)(Column)

The English poet Ernest Dowson wrote: "They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream our path emerges for a while, then closes within a dream."

Those days were not long for NBC, the leading US broadcast TV network, and they ended in a nightmare. Only three months after NBC executives reversed a decades-long voluntary ban on carrying ads for distilled spirits, a widespread outcry from members of Congress and Federal regulators, not to mention advocacy organisations and the American Medical Association, forced an abrupt about-face.

American broadcast TV is strange. Just as taboos against provocative language and frank sexual imagery are fading on the content side of the business, the advertising side remains required to follow strict rules promulgated when Ricky still loved Lucy. No commercials for condoms, despite tens of thousands of Aids deaths. No issue advertising, no matter how valuable such debate may be. And certainly no ads for hard liquor, despite more than a half-century's worth of spots for beer, wine and now even the new "malternatives" or alcopops that are brewed like beer and sold under liquor brand names such as Bacardi.

The distilled spirits industry followed a voluntary code to stay off US radio and TV from the 30s until 1997, when liquor marketers decided they could no longer deprive themselves of the benefits those powerful media could deliver. Since then, hard liquor spots have appeared on many national cable TV networks; local cable systems serving more than three quarters of all subscribers; and more than 2,400 local TV and radio stations.

But the four major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC -- continued to refuse all distilled spirits advertising, fearful that ...