‘How I Met Your Mother’ Sneaks New Movie Advertisements into Reruns: Gross?

While trying to enjoy some syndicated sitcom laughs, viewers have started to notice that advertisements for current blockbusters are seeping into their rerun viewing. You might spy a poster in the corner or an ad flashing on the TV screen behind your favorite cast of characters. You may skim over it at first until you realize that this episode is from 2006 and that movie doesn’t come out until next week. Repeats of How I Met Your Mother have been sprinkled with ads for movies like Country Strong, Bad Teacher and Zookeeper.

It’s seemingly harmless to throw a poster in the background here or there, but where does it end? With the birth of DVR and fastforwarding, we all have decided to skip through commercials now only to have them pop up WITHIN our programming. Are old movies next? “We’ll always have Disneyland Paris,” “Bacardi, shaken not stirred,” “E.T. phone home with ATT.” You get the point.

I agree with David Lynch on this one:

Should art and advertising be so boldly intertwined? Can a TV and film still have artistic integrity while promoting corporate products?