The History Channel's The FoodThat Built America Glorifies Bud Light!

The History Channel's The Food That Built America is a slick and glitzy business-school style "whig history" that covers why we have the wonderful frozen waffles, fried chicken, fast-food burgers, or packaged luncheon meats we have in this best of all possible consumer worlds. It can sometimes be vaguely informative, and even when it isn't, it gives some insight into the thought processes of the people who fancy they control the planet.

This past Sunday's episode is important for what it leaves out, since it chronicles how that wonderful product Bud Light became the top US beer, which is perfect anyhow. I'll grant that the episode must have been produced and in the can before last March, when a trans influencer singlehandedly destroyed the brand in a matter of weeks, but even if it hadn't been finished by then, that part of the story would have been so alien to the show's mission that they'd probably have had to scrap the whole episode rather than add an update.

The first part of the show covers the rise of yet another perfect, wonderful product, light beer. Philip Morris, a tobacco company, was faced with increasing regulatory limits on cigarette sales in the 1960s and decided to expand its business by buying Miller, an also-ran brewer. Philip Morris had already pioneered "light" cigarettes and was able to sell them successfully by identifying them with the macho Marlboro man, rather than trying to market any health benefits they might have.

In the process of branching into beer, they acquired another brewery that in fact produced a low-calorie beer marketed mostly toward women. That was a niche market that was going nowhere, but it also didn't taste good. Still, the Philip Morris wheels began to turn, and they decided the way to sell low-calorie beer was to call it "light", not low calorie, and imply that its main benefit was you could get more buzzed on more beer with the same amount of calories. Health had little to do with it.

Thus they made commercials with sports figures and other macho guys roaring "Tastes Great!" and "Less Filling!" According to Wikipedia,

Miller Lite was introduced nationally in 1975 and became the first successful mainstream light beer in the United States.

Miller's youth-oriented, heavy-advertising approach worked where the two previous light beers had failed, and Miller's early production totals of 12.8 million barrels quickly increased to 24.2 million barrels by 1977 as Miller rose to 2nd place in the American brewing marketplace,

Wikipedia continues,

Other brewers responded, in particular Anheuser-Busch with its heavily advertised Bud Light in 1982, which eventually overtook Lite in sales by 1994. Anheuser-Busch played on the branding style of "Lite", boasting that next to Bud Light "everything else is just a light". In 1992, light beers became the biggest domestic beer in America[.]

However, Bud Light didn't overtake Miller Lite until it decided to market to males as welL, According to The Atlantic,

A Super Bowl ad changed everything. In 1987, Anheuser-Busch made a play for younger male drinkers with a 30-second spot during the big game featuring a bull terrier named Spuds MacKenzie—“Bud Light’s original party animal!” Spuds became a pop-culture sensation, skateboarding in sunglasses and drawing the thirsty gaze of scantily clad women. “He’s Spuds MacKenzie,” the narrator of a later ad exclaimed: “One party-loving, happening dude!” . . . Spuds came to embody the fun-loving-frat-boy image that set Bud Light apart from the more staid Budweiser brand.

. . . Seven years later, in 2001, Bud Light passed Budweiser to become America’s best-selling beer, period: a staple at grocery stores and bars, a ubiquitous option at the ballpark, an entry-level lager to crush at college parties and tailgates.

This is the place where The Food That Built America ends its story. What a country! The Atlantic takes it farther:

“I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was, ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light,’” Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, told the Make Yourself at Home podcast in March. A month later, Heinerscheid was placed on leave as the company tried to control the fallout of the anti-Mulvaney boycott. Her effort to shed the company’s frat-boy image may have been too tall an order for a brand that built its empire by encouraging young men to imagine themselves as a literal horndog.

But this raises a key question. A declining top brand is still a top brand. What if Anheuser had just left Ms Heinerscheid's position vacant and decided Bud Light wasn't broken enough to try to fix? Wouldn't they have had decades of continuing profit? At this point, they'd be happy just to coast down to number two after x years without the black eye they've had from the Mulvaney fiasco. The Atlantic concludes with a shrug:

But tastes change. Schlitz was once America’s best-selling beer, and the original Budweiser’s run ended in 2001. Bud Light rose to prominence as a good-time brand that brings the party: Our beer is fun! Drink a lot of it! Today’s drinkers tend to have a more sophisticated self-conception. They also have far more options—and opinions. Beer exists in a fractious world in which anything can become ammo in the culture war, be it Disney movies or clothing at Target. No beer brand will ever be so dominant again. It’s difficult to know quite how to feel.

I'm not sure if it's that easy. By the 1960s, brewers knew you don't sell beer by marketing to women. Light beer rose to prominence by claiming to be a macho product. Suddenly a woman Harvard graduate whose appearence is calorie-conscious verging on anorexia decides the way to go is to market to guys who pretend to be skinny women. Even The Atlantic tacitly acknowledges this decision became ammo in a culture war, and that war has been a debacle.

It's probably best the History Channel could pretend it hadn't heard anything about Dylan Mulvaney. But the real history here is yet to be written.