Major Country Singer’s New Year’s Eve Performance Cut off During CBS Broadcast

Those looking forward to ringing in the new year with their favorite country stars were met with a disappointing surprise.

CBS’ broadcast New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash on Wednesday cut off a major singer’s performance.

Grammy winner Lainey Wilson had kicked off the event with a performance, and later returned to the stage to sing “Wild Horses” and “Wildflowers.” However, according to Deadline, Wilson was cut off mid-song, with the screen going to black. A few seconds later, instead of CBS going back to the program, viewers got commercials for various CBS programs before an episode of Matlock came on mid-episode.

The Kathy Bates-led drama apparently stayed on-air for a while. It was frequently interrupted by ads, promos, and the occasional “We are experiencing technical difficulties” and “We are experiencing technical difficulties, and programming will resume shortly.” The interruption lasted for over 12 minutes, and when Nashville’s Big Bash eventually resumed, co-host Bert Kreischer addressed the outage.

“We lost power here in Nashville, and we got kicked off the air on CBS,” her said, while he and fellow co-host Hardy joked that none of them were behind it. The event went on as scheduled, with Gretchen Wilson taking the stage. Since Nashville’s Big Bash ended so late on the East Coast, going until 1:30 a.m. ET, it couldn’t be edited in real time for the West Coast airing, so that broadcast also included the 12-minute interruption.

Many viewers took to X to share their frustrations, such as @letsdothis1129, who asked CBS, “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.” Similarly, @MiStout73 wondered, “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 with now black screens.”

“What the f— are you guys doing?” @ryderjj89 asked the network. “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???” Meanwhile, @therealjustjen said, “what happened to the New Year’s Nashville Bash? It cut out during Lainey Wilson singing, went to commercials & now some CBS show is playing!!”

Luckily, even despite the interruption, the special wasn’t a total bust, as @OLowry14 expressed, “This has been the best NYE Show I’ve watched in years. Can we bring Hardy, Bert and Lainey back for next year? Along with all the other amazing musical guests.”