CBS Evening News meltdown

The East Coast feed of last night's CBS Evening News was struck by a technical meltdown. Audio problems and pieces failing to start. They had to finish four minutes early, but had nothing else to fill the network time with, so had to just roll with an extended credits sequence with the theme music. They managed to put a couple of promos out, but still had time to fill, so it was back to the studio for more theme music and camera panning around the studio.

This is quite unusual on US TV, everything normally runs rather smoothly. Only time I can remember something similar was on ABC World News Tonight a couple of years ago where the first few pieces were affected by technical problems.

Video of what happened at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8qe3f1hP0Q&eurl=

Wow, I didnt know it actually lasted that long. What we saw on Sky News was until 01:15, the part with the CBS Evening News strap below the screen. She could have walked back to the desk and do some shuffling of the papers or something.

OMG, that is really embarrassing, was watching last night on Sky News and it was no-where near that long. Poor Katie.

That must have felt like an age stood there on the set! How ridiculous. No British news programme would do that - we'd at least have a roundup of news read off paper by the newsreader or something. I'm sure no ITN/BBC director would be allowed back in the gallery if the best they could say is "well do some (bad) sweeping shots of the studio instead for a couple of minutes"

And why did they leave her there, rather than getting her off set during the promos?

I can't believe the capitalist empire that is the US of A didn't use the spare time to crowbar a few more adverts in!!!!

Why didn't they just use a still with the music rather than embarrasing their anchor like that. I bet she was furious. Then again she's as much to blame, she could have walked around the desk, sat down and pretended to read her papers, maybe even do some doodles on them. At least she wouldn't have looked as much a dummy!

Why does a mouse cursor appear over the end credits for a few seconds?

A possible scenario: The credits are set to automatically run on a backtimed basis to a preset time. The problem with the report may have meant manual activation, and the mouse pointer accidentally crept into the video feed.

Indeed, why didn't she remind us of tonight's main news again from paper like they would do here
Or go to the endcap early and just freeze on that

Also all those credits! Is it the news or a movie!

Just OT (slightly) - Does anyone have the full CBS Evening News music, as seen on this clip? I've always admired it, simply for the orchestral quality of it. Is it the same as it was with Dan Rather, as the opening / closing / extended pieces from that era are the ones I really want. Can anyone help? I'd be most grateful.

It wouldn't be, Sky News records it for later transmission, so the last 90secs of the video clip would have been edited out.

The EPG entry for CBS News claims (and has done for as long as I can remember) that the CBS Evening News bulletin goes out live on Sky at the same time it does on CBS. According to the CBS News website, 6:30pm Eastern Time = 11:30pm London Time.

Totally agree - the music is fantastic. The American networks always seem to use great music that manages to sound very patriotic and American. Its by James Horner isn't it?

SN.