It’s probably not the best way to make your on-air debut.

In fact, you shouldn’t do this at all.

As the local North Dakota, NBC evening program started, new anchor A.J. Clemente mumbled “f---ing sh-t” into his microphone. When his co-host, Van Tieu introduced him, and asked Clemente to say a little bit about himself, the new anchor appeared in disarray over his on-air flub, which got him suspended.

"We were caught off guard and [Clemente] didn't realize his microphone was on,” Tieu said, in apology, on the 10 p.m. news hour. “And while that was no excuse -- we do train our reporters to always assume that any microphone is live at any time -- unfortunately we cannot take back what was said. But, we do apologize and hope that you may forgive us and rest assured, that something like this will not happen again.”

Clemente also issued his own apology on Twitter:

One Twitter user asked Clemente if he also said the word “gay” before “f---ing sh-t,” to which Clemente replied that wasn’t the case.

UPDATE: Clemente announced that the station decided to let him go via Twitter:

Watch the on-screen gaffe below:

  1. (h/t The Huffington Post)
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