SARS
From February 10 to 14, 2004, Conan O'Brien taped four episodes of NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" from the Elgin Theatre. The visit came about via the Toronto City Council's CDN$1 million (~US$750,000 at the time) payment to NBC to have the American television program visit Toronto for a week worth of shows, part of the overall council-funded PR effort of promoting Toronto as a tourist destination for Americans in the wake of the widely publicized summer 2003 Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic which adversely impacted the city's tourism industry.