"SH_T ! Let's re-take that!"

Goot gosh, a sportscaster on channel 36 in Charlotte does a bad pre-recorded take for the early morning sports segment and does another take to make it right (this was the night before it was to air), but a production and/or master control screw up causes the bad take to air, and WHO gets egg on his face and ultimately resigns? The sports guy who wanted the correct take to air. He had been a sportscaster with the station for ELEVEN YEARS, his photo is no longer on the WCNC website. Screw up ONE time and the brass never cares how many years you've given them.
At 5:51 am this past Thursday, July 27, 2006, Chuck Howard (pictured) had recorded his sportscast the night before, and, as we all do in radio and television, had a "flub" or "bad take", so he decides to re-do it. He said "Sh_t, let's re-take that". Plain, simple, common in broadcast, but uncommon for someone to mistakenly air the bad take with the "S" word in it. That's exactly what happened. Now the sports announcer has left a bad taste in the viewers mouths and the person or persons responsible for airing the wrong take are probably wiping their brow thanking their lucky stars they didn't get the blame.
Now, don't start getting images of Janet Jackson's boob in your mind, chances are, it will be forgotten by next week, if not already. The mishap took place before 6:00 am, "safe harbor" time for broadcast, a time when children are not normally watching TV, plus this is a program customized for adults, not children. Add to that the fact that it is reported that NO ONE has called the station to complain and all should be well, except for the embarrassment of the sports guy and losing his job.

In all my years of live morning shows with live phone calls, rarely on delay, I have had a caller, or an unsuspecting song, drop the "F" bomb on my show, I panicked every time, but you know what? We never received one single complaint, or even any calls about it for that matter, at all! And two of the three times it happened my show was in the #1 slot at the time! Once in New Orleans (Contest caller's name was "Dana", a guy, I asked him if anyone ever picked on him 'cause he had a girls name, he said he said "I never let 'em F_CK with me", once in Myrtle Beach (A caller trying to be caller number 98 to win Rolling Stones concert tickets was number 97, before I could get to the winner he said "Well F_CK!"), and once in Alexandria, LA (A Pinkard and Bowden song I had been playing forever "Propane", a take off of Eric Clapton's "Cocaine", I had been playing the concert version which was clean, we had just gotten the studio version in, I played it as soon as I got the cellophane off of it without previewing it, WRONG!). No one complained. I do remember the station Manager and 50% owner was in the control room at the time of the "Propaine" song incident, he was leaning over the edge of the counter talking about something that I was not paying attention to (his lips were moving but I was listening to the song), and I was listening for the end of the song, since it was the first time I had played it and it was a CD, not on hard drive with a secondary tone, I would have to fire the next event manually, and when the "F" bomb dropped, I froze, he stopped talking, there was about three seconds where we both just gazed at each other's eyes as I quickly turned the monitors down, I thought "Holy sh_t, I'm gonna' get it now." He just paused and then continued on with his very imnportant conversation about a remote broadcast coming up and never heard it. I got lucky.
That's me in this photo from 1995 around the time of the "F" bomb-in-the-song incident, I remember the song in question was playing in the top-right Denon CD player. The station manager was leaning on the countertop just to the right of the control board. I was NOT in such happy spirits at the time of the incident.