Price hikes, scattered libraries and ad tiers have pushed streaming back toward what it replaced. Has streaming made TV worse than the cable era it disrupted?
Streaming promised one simple subscription and no ads. A decade on, most people now juggle several subscriptions, some with ads anyway, to watch everything they used to get on one cable package.
What happened
Streaming services have steadily raised prices, split content across more platforms, and introduced ad-supported tiers, narrowing the gap with the cable bundles streaming originally set out to replace.
Why people disagree
Critics argue the fragmentation and rising costs have recreated cable's worst features (multiple subscriptions, ads, price creep) without cable's single-bill simplicity. Defenders argue on-demand access, no contracts, and the ability to cancel anytime still make streaming meaningfully better despite the flaws.
What's still unclear
Whether total household spend on streaming has actually caught up to what cable used to cost, since this varies enormously by how many services a given household subscribes to.
Sources
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