The new and highly anticipated season of Mr. Robot premiered Wednesday night on USA, but nobody was watching.
Well, ok, only a little over one million were watching. Today Deadline reports that the viewership for the Mr. Robot premiere was down compared to last season. For the season premiere, the show only saw 1.04 million viewers tune in. The 91-minute premiere also only drew in a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 view demographic. Compared to the season one premiere, the season two premiere saw a 20% decrease in viewership. And compared to the episode with the lowest viewing from the first season, the premiere was still down by 10%.
While these numbers may initially seem like bad news for the series, I doubt it’s going anywhere anytime soon. The premiere for Mr. Robot was competing against the ESPY Awards on ABC and the first episode of the new season had been released early online (a trend gaining more and more traction these days) so it’s very likely the viewership will increase as the season goes on and viewers have more of an incentive to tune in as each episode airs.
We also have to take into account that this particular series gets a lot of its viewership online, which to be honest is kind of really fitting, so as the episodes make their way onto the web viewership will increase.
The low viewership is pretty ironic, however, considering Mr. Robot nabbed several Emmy nominations this morning. Mr. Robot is a contender in the categories of Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series, Outstanding Drama Series, and Rami Malek was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama.
If you need more reasons as to why you shouldn’t be too worried about Mr. Robot‘s future, just remember that the series made its way onto several lists of top TV shows from 2015, including mxdwn’s.
And if you still need some convincing, maybe you’ll be happy to know that Robert Downey Jr. (yes, we mean Iron Man) is a fan of the show and even visited the set. You can check out Mr. Robot star Rami Malek talking about how he and Downey became friends in his recent interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
You can catch Mr. Robot on USA on Wednesday nights.