NEW YORK — Millions of TV viewers were duped Sunday night into watching a CBS special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, mistaking it for the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead which also aired Sunday night. Those who have admitted to being fooled say that the horrifying sensation produced by watching carcasses move about, as if they still held life inside their decaying flesh, is to blame for the confusion.

“I saw these bloated corpses prancing around on my screen, and I was like, ‘Finally, the wait for new “Walking Dead” episodes is over,’” recalled Allen Lewis of Burbank, California. “Then one of the zombies broke into ‘Hey Jude,’ and suddenly I realized I was watching a Beatles tribute show.”

Paul McCartney, 71, and Ringo Starr, 73, reunited for the anniversary concert “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles.” The geriatric rockers are still active in the music industry.

“My first thought was ‘Geeze, they really went for broke with the gross-out factor this season,’” said Carl Kaufmann of Salem, Oregon. “Then a subtitle popped up on the screen, saying I was looking at Ringo Starr. I should have known; even the wizards at AMC couldn’t dream up horrors like that.”

The brief viewing mishap notwithstanding, Jamie Harrison of Lawrence, Massachusetts offered high praise for the new “Walking Dead” episode, noting that he hadn’t “yelled so frantically at people on TV to flee while they still could” since he watched the Red Hot Chili Peppers play the Super Bowl halftime show.