TV Shows Leveraging the Web to Extend Jokes : Search Engine Snark

Fantastic article on Yahoo today about how TV shows (and How I met Your Mother in particular) are using quickly thrown-together websites and social media to carry over gags from the show to the real world:

Together, they’ve made a MySpace fan page (http://www.myspace.com/robinsparkles) for pop singer Robin Sparkles, an alter ego of the show’s Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) who enjoyed brief fame for her `80s hit “Let’s Go to the Mall.” A 3-minute music video has been viewed by more than 430,000 on YouTube.

There’s a site for Barney’s video resume (http://www.barneysvideoresume.com) and one for a Web address Robin casually mentions in an episode. Its subject can deciphered from the exceedingly long url: http://www.guyforceshiswifetodressinagarbagebagforthenextthreeyears.com.

There are others, too, but perhaps the best is a site supposedly created by a woman (played by Charlene Amoia) scorned by Barney who thinks his name is Ted Mosby (the name of Josh Radnor’s character). On http://www.tedmosbyisajerk.com, there’s a psychotic, impassioned 22-minute song by Barney’s crushed admirer.

The song was recorded in Bays’ garage with Amoia singing and ad-libbing. It’s a welcome outlet for Bays and Thomas, despite the added pressure of creating more content.

I just want to know when we get to see the video of a dog pooping on a baby, as mentioned in the Marshall-passes-the-bar episode, or get Barney’s psych-up CD playlist. Maybe even a customizable Slap Countdown website…

There is a downside to / gripe about these particular sites, though: They’re not feeding back to HIMYM’s official web presence, CBS.com or anything else. While they’re right to go for as authentic a look and fee as possible, I doubt that fans would really pitch a fit over a small ribbon at the bottom of the screen – and the extra page views and video watches would certainly help CBS out – especially since times are hard enough that they’re having to buy Canadian Shows instead of produce their own. Great, PBS without the public funding.

I’m just saying, is all…

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