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How to Watch ‘Scandal’ Online if Outside of the US

By Paul Liu
Friday, November 22nd, 2013

Scandal is a political drama and thriller series which debuted in April’ 2012. The series was created by Shonda Rhimes for the ABC Network and its lead character, Olivia Pope, was modeled after Judy Smith, who was the press aide during George H.W. Bush’s administration. Scandal has received a great response from the critics as well as the viewers (Metacritic score of 64 and IMDB rating of 7.3) and the show has even won Primetime Emmy and Image awards for its past seasons. ABC renewed the show for a third season in summer 2013 and the series made its season debut in October’ 2013.

Scandal Plot And Storyline

Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington) is the former White House Communications Director with an expertise to defuse any crisis before it gets out of the hand. During Olivia’s stint at the White House, the mighty and the powerful, including the President, relied on her skills to protect their public image and prevent any secret from leaking out. Olivia has since then moved on with her life and started her own crisis management firm, Pope & Associates. But Olivia soon discovers that she can’t leave her past behind without making some compromises.

Scandal Broadcast Schedule And Availability

Scandal is telecast on Thursday nights at 10 P.M. on the ABC channel. ABC also allows viewers to watch the series episodes online from its official website (abc.go.com/shows/scandal). However, the online episodes of the series cannot be accessed from any ad-hoc location; they are available just within US mainland. When viewers from outside US, and that includes US expats and tourists who are abroad, try to watch the show online, they just see the error message – “You appear to be outside the United States or its territories. Due to international rights agreements, we only offer this video to viewers located within the United States and its territories”.

Why ABC Blocks Scandal’s Episodes Online And How To Get Rid Of Such Restrictions?

In order to distribute the Scandal series outside America, ABC has tied up with many international content providers such as Seven Network in Australia, Channel 4 in UK, City channel in Canada and TV1 in New Zealand. As a result of the content sharing agreements that ABC has signed with its partners, the channel is not permitted to broadcast the show outside United States. The channel relies on the IP detection technology to prevent international visitors from accessing the show’s episodes online.

If you are located outside US and wish to watch the latest episodes of Scandal online, you need to use an IP changing solution and switch your IP address to a US IP. The IP changing services such as proxies and VPNs allow you to hide your real location from the ABC Network so that the location based restrictions are no longer applicable upon you. While choosing an IP changing solution, remember that VPNs offer far better speeds and top grade privacy so they are more suitable for unlocking streaming services online.

How To Unlock Full Episodes Of Scandal From Abroad With A VPN

Step 1: Sign up with a VPN service provider that offers IP addresses from USA. For unlocking Scandal’s episodes from an overseas location, we recommend subscribing to high speed and unlimited bandwidth plans from ExpressVPN, PureVPN, Kepard, VyprVPN or Private Internet Access. These vendors are renowned for their US VPN service and provide unrestricted speed and bandwidth with every VPN subscription.

Step 2: Setup the service on your mobile device or computer either by creating a new VPN connection or by installing the custom VPN client provided by your vendor. The custom tools are usually not available for mobile operating systems so you will need to configure the service manually on your Smartphone or tablet.

Step 3: Save the VPN connection’s parameters and reboot the system if it is recommended by your VPN provider. For mobile devices, it is also essential to stop and restart the ABC Player so that it can use the new connection settings to connect to the ABC portal.

Step 4: Start the VPN service by tapping the Connect button on your mobile device or by clicking the VPN connection name available in the start menu of your computer. Even if your VPN company offers ultra fast connection speeds, the actual connection time is dependent on your existing internet speed and the distance between your location and the city where the server is located.

Step 5: When the connection is established, you must verify that your new IP address is from United States. This is required because a lot of VPN companies have their default servers outside America so you would be assigned a non-US IP address when you first connect to the service. To get a US IP address in such a scenario, just browse through the list of available VPN servers and choose a US server as your VPN server of choice.

Step 6: Visit the ABC website again and click on Scandal episode titles in order to unlock the videos. For unblocking the full episodes of the series on your Smartphone or tablet, remember to stop and restart the ABC player app after switching to a US IP address. You should now be able to watch full episodes of Scandal even if you are thousands of miles away from United States.