Missing Letter on Teleprompter Leads Anchor to Hilarious News Blooper

click to play video

Great Odin's raven, the guy behind the teleprompter needs to be careful. Things move quickly on a news broadcast and often, like Ron Burgundy, a news anchor will read is on the teleprompter verbatim. That means even a single misplaced letter can produce undesirable results.

That was the situation Wednesday night during the NBC12 news broadcast in Richmond, Virginia. It was a terrible time to be in spitting distance of someone having soup for dinner. Anchor Eric Phillips lost an "r" from his teleprompter script, leading him to tell viewers they should "check their panties." (Spit take.)

He recovered like a pro and smoothly made it through the report about why locals should be checking their pantries, even if his co-anchor was having a little bit more trouble keeping it together. Meteorologist Andrew Freiden immediately recognized that this would be viewed thousands of times on YouTube and sauntered on screen, which probably was not much comfort to Philips who must have realized that he'd gone full Anchorman by that point.

Watch the clip above and check out some of the best news bloopers from September here.

Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, and get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.

Dustin Nelson is a News Writer with Thrillist. He's never been to San Diego, but hears it's nice. Follow him @dlukenelson.