Bye Bye Bud.TV
The WSJ takes note of a public Anheuser-Busch comment on Wednesday spelling the end for Bud.TV, the misplaced original online video portal the brewing company had introduced in February.
During an investor conference call yesterday, Chief Executive August Busch IV said Bud.TV will “probably fade.” Data show the number of unique visitors to the site in March dropped 40% to 152,000 from the month earlier, according to comScore. Traffic to the site in April was so low it didn’t meet the threshold for measurability, the tracking service said.
NewTeeVeesters Jackson and Steve had previously issued only slightly premature eulogies for Bud.TV, saying the site was doomed by its age-verification registration process, poor design, and lack of embeds. They differed in their opinions of the site’s videos, with Jackson calling them “forcibly viral by committee” and Steve saying “some of the content is pretty good.”
Karina took a special interest in the original Bud.TV drama Afterworld, which has since changed its distribution strategy to be more around its own site and YouTube.
Bud.TV had debuted with a gigantic write-up in the New York Times Magazine, which called it “the most ambitious and costly effort to date of a marketer creating Web content tailored to its own specifications.” That was less than four months ago.
In related news, CNN will stop charging for its video, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution declaring (via paidContent),
The free-lunch-on-the-Internet crowd has won another round. CNN is giving up on the idea of charging for CNN Pipeline, launched in late 2005 as a $25-a-year service providing four “streams” of video with footage of breaking news.
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