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WARNING: This story might contain spoilers if you didn't watch last night's episode.
Cape Town – M-Net and DStv subscribers are shocked and fuming after the pay-TV channel erroneously showed a Grey’s Anatomy teaser in which McDreamy died.
The teaser was aired before Monday night’s episode in which the character of Derek Shepard got killed off.
M-Net viewers who didn’t know that the character played by Patrick Dempsey is going to die were jolted on Monday when M-Net ran a teaser for the next episode in which the characters are sad and trying to deal with the aftermath of his death.
It’s not immediately clear why M-Net decided to run a teaser for an upcoming episode before it’s even shown the next episode preceding that one.
Schedulers and programmers at M-Net as well as those inserting promos and other marketing material for linear broadcasting are supposed to watch all the content and ensure correct playout in the right chronological order, but the mistake went unseen and unnoticed by everyone in the value chain.
M-Net is now investigating what went wrong but couldn’t immediately tell Channel24 why and who messed up.
The result on Monday night was that viewers watching M-Net found out about the character’s death just before watching the actual episode in which McDreamy dies.
M-Net treated viewers to the sobbing, sad and shocked people at the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital in the teaser who are bereaved over McDreamy who died – before actually running the episode of the character dying.
M-Net is now apologising for the error. "M-Net apologises for incorrectly screening next week's Grey's Anatomy teaser before the show. We are investigating and will feed back," says the South African pay-TV broadcaster.
#MNet apologises for incorrectly screening next week's Grey's Anatomy teaser before tonight's show. We are investigating and will feed back.
— M-Net (@MNet) June 1, 2015
This is how viewers reacted:
@MNet @DStv actually not good enough. You messed up our entire viewing. #thanksfornothing
— Michelle Bouic (@michbouic) June 1, 2015@MNet to late for that... when will you ever get it right? #youdontcare
— Freaky Loubser (@freaky_frikkie) June 1, 2015@Thobs_26 @MNet @DStv I guess telling the viewers that the lead character died before he did kinda gives the plot away
— Malcolm Lennox (@MalcolmLennox1) June 1, 2015@MNet it's argh no big deal really. The fact that the U.S. sees the episode b4 us still gives a lot away b4 we see it on prime time.
— Octavia Mashaba (@Miss_Octy) June 1, 2015
