How USA Hacked Summer TV with 'Mr. Robot'

09.08.2015

USA's Mr Robot has taken everyone by surprise except for possibly USA itself. The network was so confident in the stylistic hacker drama, produced by sister company Universal Cable Productions, that it plastered the pilot across every online, on-demand network it could find and then renewed it for season two before episode one even premiered.

With the ten episodes of season one now wrapped up, USA has the numbers to prove it knew what it had from the beginning. Prior to even premier on the network, Mr. Robot's pilot accrued 2.7 million viewers across on-demand platforms, reports Adweek. It went on to average 1.2 million adults 18-49 each week in live plus three viewing, also according to Adweek, helping raise USA Network to the top of the cable chart.Â

In an interview, USA President Chris McCumber talks about the network's vision for the show and how it plans to capitalize on it going forward.

First, he credits USA's head of marketing, Alexandra Shapiro, who "had the brilliant idea to do a wide, prelinear launch across digital. So we put it out on every platform you can think of, including Facebook, which we'd not done any long form on. And the response was overwhelmingly positive," McCumber told the magazine. He also talked about the early renewal, which was the result of several factors. First of all, the network had great confidence in the show from the moment it saw the pilot. The co-company ownership of the show also helps make that decision a little easier. And finally, series creator Sam Esmail has several seasons mapped out, and knowing the creator's vision helps network executives know what they can expect for their money.

Looking forward, Mr. Robot represents the kind of shows USA Network plans to tackle, a move away from the blue-sky dramas -- such as Burn Notice, Monk and Psych --Â that helped grow it to this point.

"When we started our development cycle almost 18 months ago on the shows that are coming out, we had a very clear vision about what we wanted to do: create shows with unlikely heroes in extraordinary circumstances," McCumber told Adweek. "And we wanted to do shows that you can't find anywhere else because these days, with the amount of television on the air, you've got to be unique to stand out. Now you're seeing the fruits of that."