Internet video has been inspiring broadcast television for some time now. The Simpsons jumped on the train early by satirizing "Noah Takes a Photo of Himself Every for Six Years." South Park mocked everyone's favorite heros and villains from online video, like Star Wars Kid, Dramatic Gopher, Chris Crocker and more. Tosh.O on Comedy Central rips on the Web's most bizarre clips. Neil Patrick Harris' Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog made it onto the 2009 Emmys. And the list goes on and on.
On Thursday night, NBC's The Office continued this trend in a major way. Pam and Jim, the sweethearts of the show, finally got hitched. Though their wedding was anything but traditional, viral video audiences have seen it before.
Just in case you didn't recognize it, the scene was inspired from the viral video hit JK Wedding Dance. When we first looked at JK's performance in July it had generated over 12 million views. It's now closing in on 33 million. But how was it affected by The Office's tribute?
As you can see from the chart, JK had been averaging ~105,000 views a day prior to its homage on The Office. The day after, JK skyrocketed more than 3x (!!), topping 400,000 views after the episode aired.
This spike in views speaks to the crucial role viral video plays at the crossroads of media. When Michael Jackson died, fans flocked to his music videos online. When Tina Fey unleashed her uncanny impression of Sarah Palin, viral video audiences viewed her clips tens of millions of times. When Britain's Got Talent uploaded a video of a shy Scottish villager who could sing, it created the unprecedented Internet sensation of Susan Boyle. While unique in its own way, Jim and Pam's wedding on The Office Thursday night is another example of the symbiotic relationship between television and viral video.
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The data used in this post was collected from our Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing video repository of analytic data on 100+ million Internet videos from 150+ video-sharing destinations.
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