I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I think what you've been saying in the past couple of posts is only partially correct.
The companies that own the rights to these songs license them out on a sliding scale based on the production budget. So yes, NBC or FOX would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to use a song in 30 Rock or Glee, but that's because those shows have 7-figure budgets per episode. A feature with a $100,000 budget, I'm almost positive, could license that exact same song for a fraction of the cost.
Again, I'm not an expert on this, and I imagine there are lots of caveats to this - for example, if the artist owns the rights to his own material, you will be facing a very different scenario than if you're dealing with BMG. But that is a rare occurrence. And I do know that several years ago I produced a no-budget play and got the synchronization rights to three very well-known songs for the low low price of free.
Just thought I'd offer this up for discussion.
