ADVERTISING

ABC Wants to Liberalize Ad Rules: ABC Television wants to relax its rules for what advertisers can put in commercials, shelving decades-old prohibitions such as those that prevented actors from posing as doctors to pitch products. ABC is also proposing to change the procedure that disgruntled advertisers must follow when they want to challenge competitors’ comparative claims. The proposals come against a background of shrunken ad revenue for the Big Three networks because of the recession and increased competition from cable and syndicated television.