Not to mention being able to cancel a streaming membership without going through the eight layers of contact center hell that still exists to this day for many cable providers.
And I remember being locked into a contract term as well for cable or satellite. All of these comparisons of streaming to cable of yore seem pretty far off, since you can mix & match services, binge, cancel some or all of them, re-subscribe later, etc. All without contract terms, and all without needing to do more than a few mouse clicks.
Not only that but I feel that a lot of these “are we going back to cable” are people too young to have used it.
The worst part of cable is the ads - when I travel and go to a hotel, I find that cable TV is unwatchable, it feels like 25% of the playtime is devoted to ads.
I've started carrying an Amazon Fire Stick with me if I'm going to be in a hotel for more than a few days (usually for work) since most TV's have an accessible HDMI port, then I can watch all my streaming channels. Hotel Wifi is so spotty that I normally use a hotspot.
Having to pay for a bunch of a channels you didn’t want wasn’t at all what separated cable from streaming.
Being able to choose what you watch along with not paying for the pleasure of watching ads is why streaming won out.