I’d always assumed there were regulations about advertising liquor on TV in the United States, but there aren’t any federal laws about it.  The absence of hard liquor commercials was self-policed by the National Association of Broadcasters as part of their voluntary code.  In applying to the FCC for new stations and acquisitions, owners would simply state they would comply with the NAB code, which bound them to the hard liquor restriction.  However, the code was dropped in the 1980s.  We were left with the alcohol companies’ own voluntary code that went away in the 1990s.  Now the remaining restrictions are around not advertising during children’s programming and showing safe drinking in the ads.  Networks and local stations often have their own policies about whether they’ll accept liquor ads and when they’ll show them. Figuring out how this may be applied (or not) to the new Internet age of media delivery is left as an exercise for the reader.