To my surprise, Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD) has apparently decided to push, rather than pull, its moribund Bud.tv web site. According today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the brewer plans to inject the site with edgier content in hopes of luring back the hundreds of thousands who tasted the limited access site and spat it out.

After peaking at a quarter million unique visitors in February following a Superbowl ad,, the site has fallen to numbers below comScore's threshold for reporting (100,000). The company had been shooting for 3-5 million. Ouch.

The site came under criticism from attorneys general across the country, who weren't satisfied with the viewer verification process and feared youngsters would be exposed to advertising for alcohol (horrors!) In response, the company dialed up the registration process to a point beyond many people's (well, mine at least) tolerance level.

Despite a $30 million budget, the site has failed to retain viewers, and most analysts expected the company to pull the plug. Their suspicions seemed to be confirmed last week when the CEO said that the site would 'fade' in the last half of '07.

Anheuser Busch, apparently convinced the problem lies in content, decided instead to try again, promising to provide more targeted and interesting features, to become the go-to aggregator of beer-related entertainment.

I don't agree with its thinking, though. We internet viewers are a fickle lot, and the slightest impediment to their browsing is enough to send us away. If the site retains its barrier to entry, the content will have to be freaking fantastic to capture its target audience.