Anheuser-Busch CEO August A. Busch IV announced yesterday that the company would cease production of Spykes, its line of flavored malt beverages in small, colorful bottles and flavors such as "hot melons" and "hot chocolate." Critics such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest had charged that the line was a ploy to market malt liquor to underage drinkers. A-B says it was trying to woo adults age 21 to 29, since many have turned away from domestic beers to try wine or distilled spirits, such as vodka and rum in recent years. Spykes has 12% alcohol …

The backers of filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary, "SiCKO," hope it will stir up emotions and help generate the kind of controversy that made his last movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," both a topic of national debate and a blockbuster. The new film--which takes on the health care and insurance industries--makes its debut at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend. Moore's formula is simple: Pick a divisive topic and goad opponents into a public debate before the movie opens. Depending on the response of the industries, the "SiCKO" marketers have created various tactics to fire back. That may include gimmicks such …

Discovery Communications will close its remaining 103 mall-based and stand-alone Discovery Channel stores by late summer or early fall. Discovery started in the 1990s with 15 stores of its own and bought 117 Nature Company stores in 1996. At the time--before the broad acceptance of online commerce--mall stores were a preferred way to sell branded merchandise. Discovery examined the possibility of selling the stores, but found little interest from potential buyers, a Discovery executive says. Online sales of Discovery merchandise are up 144% in 2007, compared with the same period last year, the company says--partly on the strength of …

American consumers bought more than four times as many Nintendo Wii video game consoles than Sony's competing PlayStation 3 during April, according to NPD Group. The ratio has widened from the first three months of the year, when the Wii outsold Sony's new console 2 to 1. Nintendo sold 360,000 Wii consoles; Sony sold 82,000 PlayStation 3 consoles. Still, analysts say it is too soon to determine whether the hole is too deep for Sony to climb out. The battle for dominance among console competitors can take years to play out, and this one is only a few months …

Wal-Mart will provide sales data from 1,000 of its more than 3,000 stores in the U.S. to the Nielsen In-Store service, an initiative also backed by the retailer's biggest customer--Procter & Gamble--and the media agency that serves them both, Starcom MediaVest Group. Wal-Mart will provide the sales data only for use by members of the Nielsen In-Store syndicate and only for that program, not broader applications. It has not released sales data to syndicated market-research firms for six years. The company has claimed it wasn't getting as much out of data it received as it was giving up in …

Amazon announced yesterday that it plans to open an online music store as early as this fall. It will sell tracks that are not encumbered by software that restricts copying. This means people could play the songs on Apple iPods or any other music player and burn them onto CDs an unlimited number of times. The service will feature songs from EMI, the world's third-biggest record label, and thousands of smaller record companies--but none of the other majors so far. EMI said in April that it would soon begin offering unshackled songs for sale through iTunes. Copy-prevention …

Tom Bradley, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard's personal systems group, is regarded as a savvy strategist. He noticed a shift in consumer preferences to notebook PCs from desktops and realized that design could increase sales. Apple long ago proved that design could be translated into higher margins, but the strategy was not obvious for a mass-market vendor like HP. "In a commoditized world you wouldn't do it, because it just adds costs," explains Satjiv Chahil, the company's head of PC marketing. But HP analyzed a number of other consumer-product categories and found that in each case, a company could …

American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey was indirectly critical of Southwest Airlines yesterday for sticking with its aggressive growth plan, even as its CEO, Gary Kelly, has complained publicly about the financial effects of industry capacity growth. Although passenger demand is still up over last year--a boom period for airlines --its rate of growth has slowed. Coupled with the new capacity added to the nation's air transportation system this year, it has been difficult for airlines to raise prices enough to offset rising fuel and other costs. Southwest's Kelly compares the current situation to instances in …

The Entertainment Software Association announced yesterday that former Commerce Dept. official Michael Gallagher will be its point man in Washington, D.C., and with state governments ESA members, include Microsoft, Nintendo, Electronic Arts and the videogame units of Sony and Warner Bros. In particular, Gallagher may face off with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who has proposed a state "Safe Games Act" as part of a broader child-safety agenda. The legislation would attempt to create a "mechanism" to stop the sale of mature games to children. The ESA has a long track record of battling such legislation on First …

The Los Angeles Dodgers are betting that several thousand of their fans will stomach steep price increases for some of the worst seats in the stadium in return for being able to eat all the hot dogs, peanuts, popcorn, nachos and soda they can handle. Tickets range from $20 to $40 apiece. The all-you-can-eat model has been a staple in the casino and cruise industries for years, but more recently, it has spread into other realms, including amusement parks. In some cases, it serves as a loss leader--casinos, for example, use it as a way to get people in …