Does television have the power to drive web video consumption? If last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother is any indication, TV’s influence over the web might not be nearly what people would expect.

The CBS sitcom featured highlights from Robin’s past, when she was the Canadian pop one-hit-wonder, Robin Sparkles. We’d previously seen the video for her breakthrough hit, but at the end of the show, there was a teaser for the “Sandcastles in the Sand, ” her follow-up single, music video on MySpace.

The show airs at 8:30pm, and as of 10pm last night, there had been roughly 17,000 views of the video. However, this morning, after the show aired in all time zones, there have only been 35,500 views. According to an article in the LA Times a few weeks ago, the show draws an average audience of around 8 million viewers, and had 10.6 million viewers during a recent episode featuring Britney Spears. That’s a paltry .35% of the audience checking out the additional web content in the 12 hours immediately following the broadcast.

Yes, its a bad spoof of 80s videos from Tiffany or Madonna, but you’d have to watch it to find out.

Sandcastles in the Sand