• Ad Age, Monday, August 21, 2006 12:15 PM

The country's largest brewer is launching an in-house film and TV production company that will make humorous shorts and sitcom-type programs to be broadcast over the Internet and to cell phones. Citing people familiar with the effort, Anheuser-Busch might even branch out into full-length films, says Ad Age. The company has done some content creation before--mostly in sports TV, where it recently produced the National Football League preseason games for the St. Louis Rams. But this new effort is believed to be the brewer's most ambitious yet. Earlier this summer, A-B pulled Jim Schumacher, its vp for creative development, out of the advertising department and into the new production group. "The fact that Schu is leading this means they're serious about it," says a source familiar with his new assignment. "They wouldn't be wasting his time otherwise."

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