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How Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden Special Became Appointment Viewing — and Benefitted From an Accidental Early Cutoff: A Variety FYC Streaming Room Panel
Producers of Billy Joel's special take part in a Variety FYC Streaming Room panel, and celebrate how a lucky mistake resulted in it airing twice.
But there was little doubt in the end that they would go with the most populist possible pick, as the producers of “Billy Joel: The 100th Live at Madison Square Garden” explained in a panel discussion for the Variety FYC Streaming Room. With the first airing, a mistake was made in the eastern time zone that cut the singer-songwriter off, mid-song, during “Piano Man,” to let local stations put on their late-night news, after sports programming earlier in the day had caused the network special to run overtime. That includes knowing, after so many shows, that if Joel sings “Only the Good Die Young,” the whole audience is going to shout out the part about “the nice white dress” and the party at a confirmation, and plan to optimally capture that on camera and an audio.
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