Throw enough stuff at the wall, something has got to stick.
Isn't that supposed to be one of the reasons oft-quoted to disparage Google?
There seems to be some folks who don't understand/realise how new TV series come to fruition, or how expensive they are to make. Take a TV show that's relatively cheap, say something like a cop show. To make a single "hour"* of scripted drama like this costs a fair few millions of dollars. It's not a case of sticking a few actors in front of a camera and hoping the best. You have lots of behind camera departments that cost money that are needed to make something semi-watchable. There's camera personnel, riggers, costuming, electricians, props, scenery, effects(both physical and CGI), editing, sound, music, just to name a few. These people don't work for free. Nor do the actors. For a more complex show with multiple locations, more complex requirements, such as Game of Thrones, and you're well into the tens of millions required before you even shoot the first scene.
Content makers don't want to gamble many tens of millions of dollars/pounds creating a whole series of a show upfront, without at least a fairly good chance of making their money back. They *may* sometimes make a pilot episode to try to sell the show, but even that's not true all the time. The show concept or pilot then gets offered to various Delivery Providers (such as Broadcasters like BBC, CBS, NBC, ITV, Fox, or streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, etc), who offer to buy the series so it can be made. There is also the fact that Content makers will be selling the content into multiple markets at the same time (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, etc).The Delivery Providers (in the case of the Broadcasters) do this generally based on the back of the fact that they know that they can sell advertising to various market segments around such programming, so that they make the money back.
Even if a show is a flop, they have already sold the advertising space, so the show production has been paid for. If a show is taken off air, you usually don't get an immediate replacement by a brand new show because it takes time to make a new replacement show. There are cases where mid-season replacement shows are prepped ahead of the January timeframe, where a show that was on the cusp of being commissioned at the start of the season is offered a half-season in place of a show that's performed poorly. A classic case in point is Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
Now imagine this new scheme where Delivery Providers are cut out of the loop.Content providers will not fund a multi-million pound/dollar full series production on their own without it being already sold to someone. So, someone has to pay the money upfront to make this show. That money has to come from somewhere, so the new Distribution "channel" has to price delivery of that show based on at least breaking even. If it's a service that isn't supported by advertising, that per show/episode cost to the end user (us) goes up even further. Even the almighty Apple is not a fortune teller. They can't tell how popular some new show may be, so they will err on the side of caution in the pricing the show to users. Suddenly you're finding that your price in this new streaming "utopia" for that TV show you like is a couple of dollars/pounds *per episode*. Say you like four or five shows, a series of 22 episodes, and now you're paying a lot more for a lot less.....
* It's not really an hour, of course. It's actually 44 to 46 minutes to allow for the advertising slots on broadcast TV
