NBC doesn't own Johnny!

When NBC aired the tribute to the late Johnny Carson this past Monday on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, they had to contact someone in Kansas to get the tapes to compile clips. It turns out Carson Productions owns the rights for at least 21 years worth of footage so they have the tapes. When NBC wanted to put together a tribute to Johnny Carson after he died last week, a call was made to Hutchinson.

The tapes that were needed were stored in Underground Vaults and Storage in Hutchinson, where about 5,000 tapes from "The Tonight Show" have been stored for 10 years.

Carson's nephew, Jeff Sotzing, called on Monday, the day after Carson died, to say that the tapes were needed in Burbank, Calif., as soon as possible, said Margaret Easter, vice president for sales with Underground Vaults and Storage.

Five tapes were retrieved and Wichita's NBC affiliate transmitted them to Burbank. The tapes were immediately returned to the former salt mine.

The clips were used in a tribute that Jay Leno paid to Carson on "The Tonight Show" Monday night.

Carson Productions, of Santa Monica, Calif., controls the rights to all "The Tonight Show" tapes recorded from 1971 to 1992.[...]

"The Carson Film Library is in a pristine, locked, secure, undisclosed location," Easter said. "It's environmentally sound and temperature- and humidity-controlled."

Undisclosed location? With Dick Cheney? The locked box?