After reading the long piece in the New York Times Sunday magazine about Budweiser’s creation of BudTV, followed by Steve Safran’s two-thumbs-down review of said service at the Lost Remote blog, I had to check it out for myself — and I have to say Steve is right on the money. BudTV sucks big time. It’s not just cringe-inducing in the usual way that Bud commercials are, either. It’s bad through and through — as in not funny.
Apparently, Anheuser-Busch is spending $30-million in this thing, and all kinds of comic and movie celebrities like Chris Parnell (ex of Saturday Night Live) and Kevin Spacey are involved — which just makes it even more obvious that money doesn’t buy humour. Not even close. Chris Parnell’s Future Show, with Chris Farley’s brother, is right off the lame-o-meter, and another show called Arrogant Fake British Rich Guy is just stupid. Not even groan funny — just stupid. So is Billy Lama. I think I chuckled once, but only once. By that standard, the typical Bud Light commercial is Monty Python squared.
Lost Remote and PaidContent also point out that for BudTV, “sharing” consists of cutting and pasting a URL into an email to a friend. Wow. How 1996. And the registration process is onerous and confusing (not to mention likely useless as far as age verification is concerned). NewTeeVee didn’t think much of it either. This is the future of TV? I hope not.