It was announced today that AMERICAN IDOL acquired the rights to the Lennon/McCartney songbook for the first time in its seven seasons. And what does that mean? BEATLES WEEK!

IDOL has said that they’re focusing on the contestants more this season and only planning on four guest mentors. Surely, scoring McCartney or Ringo would be a huge “get” and one worth doing.

Now, hold onto your hats:

Apple is a major sponsor of IDOL this year. Besides selling all the audio and videos of the show performances on iTunes, they’re also advertising their computers and iPods during the show.

Wouldn’t “Beatles Week” be the perfect time to release the Beatles catalogue to iTunes, with an original Beatle appearing on the show and everything?

It’s corporate synergy. It’s the biggest TV show of the week. It’s masterful marketing and promotion. You don’t need Steve Jobs to make the announcements to a few hundred journalists when you have Ryan Seacrest telling tens of millions of people, after weeks of advertising the iPod Touch on the show.

Discuss.