Showtime releases ‘Ray Donovan,’ ‘Masters of Sex’ season 3 premieres early

When it comes to releasing premiere episodes early, Showtime has a tendency to be fairly reliable. Their strategy with this is a fairly simple one: They want to create buss early, and potentially get some more subscribers out of early releases. This is a move that other networks such as HBO and even some cable channels have emulated in recent years.

Today, Showtime opted yet again to make the season premieres of both “Ray Donovan” and “Masters of Sex” available online prior to their premieres. You can watch the one for “Ray Donovan” here, while the one for “Masters of Sex” is over at this link. Unfortunately, these are available only for United States residents, so sorry to the overseas crowd. One other thing that you have to remember here is that since these are YouTube videos, they are not going to contain the same strong language and sexual content that Showtime programs contain on the network. They are slightly censored and contain information about how to subscribe.

This is ultimately still a strong move for Showtime, since we don’t think that many people are subscribing just so that they can see TV-MA content that they can probably find all over the internet. This is about quality, and both of these series have history of getting Emmy nominations and are supported by passionate fans.

Of the two, we feel like “Masters of Sex” is probably the one that is taking the biggest risk going into the new season. They have decided to push the story forward deep into the 1960s, which means that Bill, Virginia, and many other characters are in a completely new era where they are perceived rather differently.

What do you think about this as a marketing strategy? Share below, and be sure to check out some of our other recent “Masters of Sex” coverage. You can also sign up at the link here to get some additional TV news on all we cover, sent right to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Showtime.)