{"id":9091,"date":"2018-08-30T03:39:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T09:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=9091"},"modified":"2018-08-30T03:39:07","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T09:39:07","slug":"a-decade-after-bud-tv-was-cancelled-brewdog-goes-on-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/a-decade-after-bud-tv-was-cancelled-brewdog-goes-on-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade After Bud TV Was Cancelled, BrewDog Goes on the Air"},"content":{"rendered":"
Remember Bud TV? That was the first time a beer company tried to set up an online entertainment network. It was a fiasco, and Anheuser-Busch pulled the plug on Bud TV in 2009, less than two years after it launched.<\/p>\n
Undaunted, the popular craft brewer BrewDog has just launched its own<\/a> entertainment channel. The BrewDog Network<\/a> is an an ad-free, on-demand video subscription service that invites viewers to “join the craft beer revolution.” A strange brew of comedy, travel, and beer talk, BrewDog is hoping to build a Netflix-like destination where A-B so spectacularly failed.<\/p>\n Bud TV ‘s failure wasn’t because of a lack of money. The King of Beers budgeted $30 million for the first year alone and hyped it in its 2007 Super Bowl ads. Expensive talent was hired to provide content. Joe Buck and Dale Earnhardt Jr. signed on to do sports shows. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company agreed to do a reality show called “Finish Our Film.” But most of the lineup was 1-3 minute comedy skits in the same spirit as the brewery’s famous commercials.<\/p>\n Too bad it was such a hassle to log on and watch. Bud TV was crippled from the start by a complex age-verification system, to ensure no under-21s were exposed to beer-drinking. The process was so laborious that, according to the book Bitter Brew<\/i><\/a>, CEO August Busch IV himself complained he couldn’t create an account.<\/p>\n