The media and the popular arts thrive on synergy: Broadcasters and publishers play footsy with movie companies, record labels and talent agencies to keep the public drooling over whatever product or personality they're all selling at this particular moment. Synergy takes work, but sometimes it just happens and people make a bundle anyway.
Take Billy Joel, who through no effort on his part just caught a windfall thanks to that mysterious man who was found wet and confused on an English beach. After the guy's musical abilities impressed the staff of the hospital he was brought to, the media unimaginatively dubbed him the Piano Man.
It just so happens that last January Sony Music Direct, the division of Sony Records that takes care of the firm's back catalog, put out yet another Billy Joel greatest hits collection in Japan called "Piano Man," which was the title of Joel's first hit single back in 1974. When the Piano Man story started getting attention, all the news stations in Japan played the Joel song in the background during the reports.