Mission pays dividends as indie syncs big on prime-time show.

AN INDEPENDENT MUSIC PUBLISHER LANDED A SONG in hit US TV show 90210 after following up with contacts made during a UK sync mission to Los Angeles last November.

Annie Reed, who runs Annie Reed Music, was among a delegation of 40 on the BPI and UK Trade and Investment-organised event, which placed UK music companies in front of key US executives from the likes of NBC Universal TV, Fox and CBS as well as US music licensing agencies such as Hit The Ground and The Chop Shop.

It was a follow-up email to one of those execs on their return home that led to Reed getting her company's Natacha Atlas song Bathaddak into the CBS show. The episode of 90210 featuring the song was broadcast in the US late last month.

As she recalls, "I started off re-contacting the people I had had the best rapport with and half an hour later I got an email back from one saying, `You're not going to believe this, I'm getting asked for a contemporary Egyptian song for 90210', so I pitched that one."

Since the mission, Reed has also secured publishing on Lee "Scratch" Perry's Grammy-nominated album Repentance from State of Emergency's Steve Marshal, a fellow delegate on the mission.

The next such trip takes place in LA on April 21-23 and Reed, who set up her own company in 2005 after 15 years at Realworld, has no doubts about the benefits of going.

"I honestly can't tell you how fantastically organised the last one was," she says. "The ...