CBS’ New Year’s Eve special didn’t exactly do smoothly.
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The Paramount-Skydance-backed network enraged viewers on Wednesday night when its NYE show, New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, abruptly switched off.
In place of a Lainey Wilson performance, viewers were greeted with a barrage of commercials. Then, an episode of the Matlock reboot began to air before cutting back to even more ads.
It’s unclear exactly what went wrong, though host Bert Kreischer blamed a power outage. Regardless, the technical difficulties pissed off CBS watchers, who wanted to watch a country-music-themed NYE show — not Kathy Bates tackling legal cases. Here are some of the live reactions:
- “what is going on with the New Year’s Eve Nashville show? It freezes during a performance, then cuts to commercials, then into some strange scene from Matlock…. LMAO” (source)
- “Whats going on in Nashville at the #NashvillesBigBash. CBS cut the performance & its been 300 commercials & matlock” (source)
- “WTH [CBS] y’all just cut of Lainey’s performance and went to commercials…. [angry emojis] get it together! and now a BLACK SCREEN….. wtf???” (source)
- “@CBS how y’all do Lainey Wilson like that during one of her best songs?” (source)
- “@CBS What the f— are you guys doing? Trying to watch the Nashville Big Bash and its jumping all over the place. Was watching Lainey Wilson perform and it froze then a news ad and then Matlock then back to ads. What the hell???” (source)
- “@CBS @cbschicago how come we lost the Nashville big bash for a bunch of commercials and then a rerun of matlock?” (source)
- “What in gods name is going on with @CBS We’re supposed to be watching New Years in Nashville not Matlock and boatloads of commercials and now black screens.” (source)
While CBS execs might have hoped the tech issue would go unnoticed, media outlets quickly picked up on the blunder, such as Billboard, Deadline, Variety and our sister site, American Songwriter.