Thousands of children are exposed to alcohol commercials during popular television shows, a campaign group warned.
The Simpsons, Home and Away, Coronation Street and The X-Factor all carried drinks adverts during commercial breaks, Alcohol Concern said.
Booze commercials increase "dramatically" between 3pm and 5pm - the time when children are home from school, its study found.
Alcohol Concern is calling for a 9pm watershed to be introduced for alcohol advertising to reduce the number of children who see them.
At present, alcohol adverts can be broadcast at any time of day providing they are not shown during programmes where children make up more than 20% of the viewers.
But Alcohol Concern says this threshold makes it impossible for parents to predict when drink commercials will be shown.
The charity's calls follow its Not In Front Of The Children report which monitored the number of drinks adverts before and after 9pm during one week in December 2006 and one week in March 2007. Researchers monitored eight channels across terrestrial TV, cable and satellite.
Alcohol Concern chief executive Srabani Sen said: "A watershed ban is the only way to give parents the peace of mind of knowing that their children can be kept safe from the influence of advertising."
The Alcohol Concern report was funded by the Alcohol Education and Research Council.
Responding to its calls for a 9pm watershed for alcohol adverts, a spokesman for the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP), said: "At this time BCAP is not considering a change to its alcohol codes, including the rules on where and when in the schedules alcohol ads may appear."
