On July 10, the season two premiere of USA’s paranoid cyber-security thriller Mr Robot found its way online, but for a limited time only.
In contrast with HBO and Starz, the latest networks to make show premieres, including The Night Of and Outlander, available to stream ahead of time, USA made the Mr Robot episode available within a very narrow window before pulling it offline.
The episode’s availability was announced with little fanfare via a video within the Mr Robot Facebook Live event held on Sunday night with members of the cast, including Rami Malek and Christian Slater.
The pretence of the video was a security breach as perpetrated by fsociety, the fictional hacking group from the Mr Robot universe.
Shortly after, the official Mr Robot Twitter feed posted a schedule listing times and locations where the episode would be streaming, noting that it would be the only opportunity available until the official Wednesday airing.
At the conclusion of each airing, the stream was deleted and fans were left to wait for the official premiere on television.
Further, the stream was only the first of two new Mr Robot episodes scheduled to be shown on Wednesday night, and it concluded with a title card that read: “Intermission.”
The show’s Twitter account was also actively monitoring reactions to the streaming news, tweeting unnerving personalised messages to individuals who had shared the news.
Streaming the premiere in an unconventional way felt like the right choice for the show, said Alexandra Shapiro, executive vice-president, marketing and digital for USA Network.
“The series, at its core, is against conformity and anti-rules. We try to embody this same ethos in our marketing approach,” she said.
Shapiro added that the choice to limit the amount of time the premiere would be available was a pointed strategy intended to create excitement that “comes from both the people who were lucky enough to see it as well as the ones who didn’t.”
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