Alec Baldwin, star of 30 Rock, took to his Twitter account hours before the opening of The Emmy Awards to let fans know that FOX had removed a joke he made about the News Corp phone hacking scandal from the show’s opening sketch.

Baldwin tweeted that, “Fox did kill my NewsCorp hacking joke. Which sucks bc I think it would have made them look better. A little.” He added, “I understand News Corp killing that joke.”

According to Deadline Hollywood, which first reported the change to tonight’s opening sketch, Baldwin asked FOX to remove him from the skit entirely after learning that the phone hacking joke had been removed. FOX in turn replaced Baldwin with Leonard Nimoy, who Deadline reports re-filmed the skit, minus the joke.

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The News Corp scandal dominated the media world earlier this year following revelations that The News of the World hacked into the voicemail of a missing girl in the UK, giving the family false hope that she was still alive. That case resulted in the closure of the tabloid paper, News Corp dropping its bid for BSkyB and ongoing investigations into the reporting practices of the media giant.

UPDATE: The New York Times's TV & Digital Media Reporter Brian Stelter was able to discover the joke that was cut from the broadcast, and shared it via Twitter.

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