TV Regulators Are Focusing on Liquor Ads by Seagram

Two of the nation’s top broadcast regulators want to know what Seagram is doing to ensure that its commercials for whiskey don’t tempt underage drinkers.

Seagram has been airing commercials for Chivas Regal and Crown Royal on little-watched stations since March despite a 48-year-old, voluntary industry ban on liquor advertising on TV.

The spots use animals to make the pitch. The spot for Crown Royal, for example, depicts two graduates from dog obedience school, with the valedictorian carrying a Crown Royal flask.

In separate comments, two members of the Federal Communications Commission have expressed concern about the Seagram spots, which have aired in only a handful of cities.

“It looks like they are putting their toe in the water to see how cold it is,” Commissioner James Quello said Monday. “If they are making drinking attractive to young people, I would think the water would be quite cold.”

FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said he hopes to meet with Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. to discuss the purpose of the ads.

The FCC has no jurisdiction over liquor advertising but in its role as broadcast regulator has clout over what appears on TV. The commission licenses broadcast television stations.

“The fact that the FCC is raising questions is something that will not escape the attention of TV stations and it could have a chilling effect” on liquor advertising, said New York attorney Jeffrey S. Edlestein, former chief of standards and practices at ABC.

“Once the FCC starts talking, that could change everything,” said a sales executive at a television station that plans to air the Seagram ads. “They control the whole thing.”

The comments of the FCC commissioners are the latest wrinkles in the controversy over the Seagram ads. President Clinton in June urged the spirits industry to continue its television advertising ban, to protect children from exposure to liquor, but his message was ignored by Seagram.

Seagram has maintained that it is a responsible advertiser. On a station in suburban Boston, the spots do not appear before 9 p.m. A station in Houston which plans to air the spots later this month has imposed a similar time restriction.

Seagram had no comment Monday on the statements of the FCC commissioners, except to say that it had not yet been contacted by Hundt.

Legal experts on Monday could not a recall a case where the FCC weighed in on TV advertising without a specific mandate from Congress. Under federal law, the FCC has jurisdiction over children’s advertising and television and radio pitches for gambling, said Edlestein, a partner with Hall, Dickler, Kent, Friedman & Wood, which specializes in advertising law.

But Edlestein said: “The FCC licenses the TV stations and the networks. In that sense, the FCC has jurisdiction over everything that goes on television.”

Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) has proposed a government ban on television liquor advertising, but with the election approaching, his measure is stalled in Congress.