Alec Baldwin missed the Emmy awards Sunday night and explained his absence in a biting post combining his trademark humor with a zinger at Fox network’s parent company News Corp.

Explaining that he had a prior commitment for a charity event, he said that he had pre-taped a skit with host Jane Lynch that the network decided not to air during the Emmys broadcast.

“In that routine, I made a joke about the News Corp. phone hacking scandal which the writers and producers had pre-approved before I made the trip. We shot the segment with the joke in. A couple of days later, I was informed that the producers had been told by some Fox entity that the joke had to be cut. I then asked that the entire piece be omitted, as I felt the joke was, perhaps, the funniest thing in it,” Baldwin wrote on the Huffington Post.