Carrie Underwood Emmy Awards Performance

The Television Academy announced today that American Idol-cum-Maria Von Trapp Carrie Underwood will perform during Sunday night's ceremony, as part of a special segment honoring the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Don Cheadle will also be on hand to present a tribute to television's role in covering the 1963 event. He will then (in what is bound to be a somewhat awkward transition) give a shout-out to the much lighter-hearted "television event" that took place eighty days later: The Beatles' debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Afterwards, Underwood will take to the stage to perform a medley of Sixties music (fingers crossed that it looks like this).

Big production numbers like this are unusual for the Emmys, so it will be interesting to see how performances like Underwood's (and Elton John's) are received. Unfortunately, host Neil Patrick Harris will not begin the ceremony with a tribute to the three month anniversary of his phenomenal Tony opener.