Whoops!
The AFC Championship is always one of CBS’ biggest events of the year (arguably the biggest in non-Super Bowl years for the network, like this one), and with just one game on the network, they pull out all the stops for it. That means a big-time promo ( this year featuring Tom Cruise) and sending the studio show crew to the stadium for pre-game and halftime shows on the field. One of the reasons NFL broadcasts don’t do remote shows often is they are big business and operating away from the studio brings a lot of variables into play that can wreck things, which CBS learned the hard way at Arrowhead when their halftime show got steamrolled by a Walker Hayes concert happening at midfield. The Chiefs wheeled a bunch of speakers out on the field so the crowd could hear it, rather than just blasting it over the PA system, and one of those sets of speakers was directly behind the CBS set. The result was an abject disaster as the crew tried to break down the game while music blared behind them. Someone at CBS forgot to check halftime show speaker levels… pic.
