Up to a quarter million dollars per appearance might be sunk into luxury travel, limos, professional hair and makeup, elaborate clothes, and an entourage whose purpose was to, say, pick all the blue M&Ms out of the bowls in said star's dressing room. The value of an on-camera performance, the labels reasoned, was still cheaper than taking out an ad.

A check for $250,000 feeds a lot of hangers-on and hairstylists, but the music companies are following the general American corporate flow and slashing expenses. Entertainment Weekly reports that Universal, which backs acts like Bon Jovi, Ne-Yo, and The Pussycat Dolls, has capped the bill for each appearance at $50,000. For just fifty grand, artists now have to figure out how to look like a million bucks. That's not much when you're Lil Wayne and your big single is called "Got Money."

We all do it. When we're planning a trip to an unfamiliar city or we're looking for a new hole-in-the-wall for a dinner date near home, we poke around online for reviews of local restaurants.

But on some sites, reviews are serving up a steaming plate of B.S.

WalletPop told you about the hugely popular Yelp, which has been accused of extorting restaurants and shops that got received bad reviews. For a price, says a San Francisco CBS affiliate, Yelp will move the badmouthing blurb lower down the page, potentially out of sight. One sofa store owner paid Yelp $350 a month to bury her embarrassing reviews.

Last year, one New York City hotel was awarded a five-star review by an effusive reader of TripAdvisor. Except the hotel hadn't even completed construction yet. Public relations flacks were suspected.

This sort of stuff happens all the time. TripAdvisor says it tries to weed out these obviously false postings. But some readers allege it swerves too far even in that. One travel expert about Hawaii accuses TripAdvisor of twice killing reviews that conflicted with its paid sponsors. For sites like these, integrity is everything. Many publications, though, don't have the resources to do the follow-ups necessary. Increasingly, the phonies are not apparent.