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.
