CBS’ NYE Special ‘Nashville’s Big Bash’ Hit By Tech Issues; Network Briefly Switches To ‘Matlock’ Rerun
CBS‘ popular legal drama Matlock made an unscheduled appearance during the network’s New Year’s Eve presentation.
About 42.5 minutes into CBS‘ holiday special New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash, a performance by Lainey Wilson was cut off abruptly mid-song. The screen went black for a few seconds, followed by a string of promos for Survivor and other CBS programs before an episode of Matlock came on mid-scene. The drama starring Kathy Bates went on for awhile, frequently interrupted by ads and promos and accompanied by a crawl “We are experiencing technical difficulties” that was subsequently replaced by a longer one, “We are experiencing technical difficulties and programming will resume shortly.”
After an interruption that lasted more than 12 minutes, Nashville’s Big Bash resumed, with co-host Bert Kreischer addressing the outage.
“We lost power here in Nashville, and we got kicked off the air on CBS,” he said as he and fellow co-host Hardy joked that none of them pulled any plugs to cause the incident.
The special aired live on CBS and Paramount+ from 8-10 p.m. ET/PT and 10:30-1:30 a.m. ET/PT. Because it ended so late on the East Coast, it couldn’t be edited in real time for the West Coast where the concert also included the 12-minute interruption.
