Whoever’s running the control room at CBS should be fired.
The network cut off Billy Joel’s two hour concert special tonight right at the end, as Billy was singing “Piano Man,” his most famous song.
Just as Billy was launching into the finale of the two hour show — the last verse of “Piano Man” with all of Madison Square Garden singing along — the screen went black.
When it recovered, it wasn’t Joel taking a bow with his band for what had been a remarkable, Emmy worthy special. No, it was the local news anchor (and not Dana Tyler).
CBS paid a fortune to put this show on two weeks ago the Garden, and this was how it ended.
Fans are demanding the whole show be rerun immediately on CBS, not just Paramount Plus. But this episode should be a lesson to CBS — their share of viewers is already diminished severely. They don’t need a boycott.
One reason this might have happened is because the Joel special was hitting the half hour mark at 11:30 and had already run 30 minutes past its allotted time. But that’s because the whole schedule was pushed because of golf. “60 Minutes” started late, followed by “Tracker,” so the Billy Joel show was tardy as well.
A real blot on the Tiffany network.
