I just don't pay for it. If there's something I really wanna watch I might buy one month of the service binge it then cancel.

The streaming model has imho mostly killed old style television formats with the new way of hyping up a show in the first couple episodes by tossing money and talent, then leave people to hang with unsatisfying conclusions once you've got that sub money. It's all about convincing people to sign up and stay signed up with promises for new content. The quality of the content doesn't matter as long as there's a lot of it and it's enough to keep people from unsubscribing.

With traditional TV your value was directly determined by how many people were watching so you could sell addspace. And despite there being less choice and harder for independent players to get time, in some ways it was weirdly more democratic because if a show sucked or an episode sucked people would just change the channel or watch something else. With streaming they still do that but it's all in the same price scheme so doesn't hurt their bottom line. They're incentivised to just crank out as much crap as possible to keep subs up. Won't last.

In the US, there are a lot more rich people than there used to be [1] and they're often driving prices up because they can afford to pay. (Most obviously in real estate.)

[1] https://pages.skybrian.com/2026/us-households-by-income-band...

and the content strangely sucks most of the time. like no one can write, edit, direct, or act anymore. Not always but strangely often.

I believe its called South America now.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I stopped watching broadcast/cable TV 20 years ago. I had Netflix until they switched to their own content and started raising rates, so I dropped it. I now rent DVDs from a place about 15 minutes from me. I also have Kanopy for free. Here’s the opinion: stop watching. That’s the only way to send a message. Read a book. Rent a dvd. Or play a game. Or draw. Or visit friends and play board games. Or learn to play an instrument. Or find a game store near you and go to game nights. Or bowl. Find something else to do than drool at a screen watching content product that doesn’t give a shit about. Right now I’m doing advent of code from 2019 in LISP. Haven’t programmed lisp since college and I’m having a blast. Get a hobby. Screw the media machine.

> Paramount Plus has nothing else.

This is funny, because every damn time I find something I want to watch its on paramount+.

There has to be a paradox/law named after this at this point. "The thing you're trying to watch will always be on the service you don't have."

For South Park, I just wait for a full season to be out and watch it over a month, then cancel. $15 for a season isn't too bad.

If only there was a service where you paid a fixed price for a bundle and you had a set top box that had all these channels together in one package. Of course you'd have a lot of channels you never looked at but overall it would be more efficient.

Without even looking at the data, I bet both of your hypotheses here are wrong.

I bet the median American has more real disposable income than four years ago.

I bet the median American spends more in real terms on entertainment (and streaming specifically) than four years ago.

Almost without fail, the data in almost any area of modern life seems to be way less negative than people’s vibes about it are.

Also, nobody has any time for entertainment. Office workers all working 80 hours a week fearing stack ranking, PIPs, layoffs, needing to scramble to get a new H1B job or risk getting kicked out of the country and having to uproot kids. Service workers are working 120 hours a week across 3 jobs. Single people are working 100+ hours a week studying and interviewing and not getting jobs.