Li Yong (pictured), a well-known game show anchor with China Central Television (CCTV), apologized through his blog for jokes about people from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province on Wednesday.

In the January 12 episode of Luck 52, a top-ranking TV program on CCTV, Li addressed Shaanxi people as "lazy bones singing Qinqiang (a local opera genre)" while presiding over a singing contest featuring opera arias from that province.

Over the past few days, the CCTV hotline has been flooded with hundreds of complaints from TV viewers about Li's inappropriate jokes.

"The motive behind my joke was to lighten up the atmosphere and help the contestants, one of them from Shaanxi Province, relax in the studio. But as a veteran anchor, I should have avoided such a slip of the tongue which has hurt my audiences so much. I have no excuse and feel really sorry about the incident," Li wrote in his blog.