CW’s Power Play with “The Game”

If you caught the January 9th episode of “The Game”, one of the CW’s two sitcoms with a predominately African-American cast, you may have seen Malik Wright (played by Hosea Chanchez) in an interview with Kevin Frazier which also talked about his website, MalikWright.com. And would you believe it — it’s real! More than that, there’s also a corresponding Blogspot site, as well as a CW message board, a Flash video widget, and a Facebook fan page for the show and to interact with fans.

This isn’t the first Black sitcom to implement the Web to help promote the show and give a more real world aspect to their characters. “Half & Half”, an ensemble cast sitcom on the now-defunct UPN, often featured protagonist Mona Thorne’s blog “The Mona-logue” in the show’s third and fourth seasons. Mona would post an entry to her blog in the show (complete with similar “Sex and the City” questions spelled out on the laptop screen), and minutes later, it would update live on her site. She also regularly used some advice given by commenters in the show, and gave them recognition on her blog.

The CW Network seems to be ahead of the curve of some major broadcast networks in terms of fan interaction with their scripted shows. Sure, both CBS and NBC have done similar things on their shows, but the CW (and UPN, by proxy), started the trend and is keeping it going. In an age of dying Black sitcoms, I think shows in the future looking to garner audience participation and feedback could learn a lot from this.

House of Payne? Somebodies? Anyone?