Fans of Billy Joel thought they were in for a bad joke on Sunday when the broadcast of his concert at Madison Square Garden presented on CBS was interrupted during the climax of the famous song. Piano Man.
From the beginning of February, American television channel CBS announced that it will be offering 100e Billy Joel's residency at Madison Square Garden in New York. The recording during this special moment took place on March 28, and the telecast was scheduled for April 14.
When the big day finally arrived, the CBS Masters Tournament, a prestigious golf tournament, had to delay its telecast for thirty minutes to complete the live broadcast. That's life, as they say. The concert finally started around 9:30 PM and until around 11:28 PM, everything was going great.
However, when the audience was ready to finish singing along by watching Billy Joel in concert Piano Man, the most popular title of his illustrious career, CBS had other plans. As he began the last verse of the song, Billy Joel was suddenly overtaken by a news bulletin scheduled for the 11:30 pm time slot of the American channel.
It ends in a fishtail for Billy Joel, who has never seen one of his concerts televised in a career spanning more than 50 years.
Angry fans
The interruption caused strong reactions among viewers on Sunday. Many took to social media to express their displeasure with CBS.
“How could Billy Joel cut the show in the middle? Piano Man?» Barstool launched a particularly popular sports channel, followed by X platform with 5.7 million internet users.
“CBS has been showing commercials for this concert every two minutes for the past few weeks. What better way to do it than to start 30 minutes late and cut it off Piano Man?» Quite ironically, said another user of X.
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