And before you go on a rant against Cable Channels. They spend billions of dollars to provide content that you presumably enjoy for basically "free." They have to leverage their programming anyway they can and their business model has worked for 70 years, they have zero incentive to change it, just because this new generation are bunch of cheap freeloaders who think everything should be free, however and whenever they want. Or at the very least dirt cheap. Why they pick and choose specific cable providers to work with comes down to those cable providers paying for access to those apps. I don't like it and I've been known to yell and scream about HBO Go not being available on Roku because of Xfinity. Which in of itself would be acceptable if it wasn't already available on various other devices... But that's another argument.
This is one of the most clueless posts I have ever heard. 70 years? You do realize don't you that the cable industry has only been around for about 35 years? And before anyone gets all up in arms about when it was actually born, it didn't start to gain popularity until the 80s. Prior to that all television was over the airwaves, and was free to the user as long as they watched the advertising. Once cable came along customers began to get used to paying to watch what was billed as "premium" content. But lo and behold, the previously free channels were bundled into that package, and more advertisement based channels were added over the years. I won't go into the quality of all of those channels, because each one has value to someone based on what they want to watch.
But it's pretty obvious that pay television providers bundle a bunch of unpopular channels into their packages, when the only channels people are really willing to pay for are the main drivers of consumer demand. So the idea that they pay billions of dollars to provide me channels for free is just an ignorant statement. I pay in excess of $100 a month, and usually have difficulty finding anything worth watching.
At least 90% of the channels that my pay for television provider puts on my television are things I would never even dream of watching for free, much less pay for it. Not to mention that almost all of that content that you claim they give for free is advertising based, so not only am I being told that it's being provided as part of my expensive package, but I am having to watch commercials on those channels, as well (assuming I were to even watch those channels).
Why do I even keep pay television? Because the industry is smart enough to have gradually migrated traditionally free, but desirable programming from the free, advertising based realm to the pay world, even though the advertising is still there. Things like major sports. Did you know that I can no longer watch my local baseball team, for whom's stadium I paid taxes to build unless I subscribe to pay television? That's the way it is in most, if not all cities now. And unless I have pay television I would not have been able to watch ANY of the MLB playoffs before the World Series. And unless someone is "willing to play hardball" that trend will continue.
Less and less of advertising based programming that you used to get for free will be available outside of a pay television package. Yet the advertising will continue. And the only reason for that is the continued power of the cable industry.
So cry me a river about the "magnanimous" pay television companies who "pay billions of dollars a year to give me free programming." Theirs is a very lucrative business model, and they think the exorbitant fees we're paying for lousy service and crappy, advertising based programming is too little. Do you realize how much worse things would be now if DirecTV, and especially DISH Network had not come into the picture?
You should do a little research into the history of this business, before making half-baked statements and claims. I have been through the transformation from the 60s to today. I lived it.
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