On Conan O'Brien's last show, guest Tom Hanks was played on with the Beatles song, "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" — a reference, of course, to Hanks' wife, Rita Wilson. This, by the way, is the same song that Paul Shaffer usually uses to play Mr. Hanks on when he comes on to converse with D. Letterman.
It has made the rounds of the Internet — and even been reported in articles like this one — that this was a departing act of sabotage by the O'Brien gang. To play that song, they reported, costs a fee of half a million dollars. ?uestlove, the bandleader on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, said as much in a widely-quoted Twitter posting.
This is not so. NBC will not pay a half-mil to Sony (which controls the Beatles catalog) for the use of that song, just as CBS pays no such fee when Mr. Shaffer plays it. The amount will be modest…a few bucks, nothing NBC doesn't expect.
I'm kinda stunned people believe that Conan O'Brien, after just asking America to donate to help the poor citizens of Haiti, would turn around and toss a half-million bucks away for what wouldn't even be much of a joke. Moral of the story: Never listen to a man whose name starts with a punctuation mark.