> It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.
The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe and cancel at your whim.
None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to be owned and sold by someone. What other situation should we have expected?
You won't have to deal with the company that owned the wire or the satellite service, but you'll have to deal with one of the few companies that are purchasing IPs left and right (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Disney).
In the end it's just different people controlling the distribution.
The difference was that the content owners still had the choice to have their content available in other media formats, now it's the distributors that own the content and will (probably) limit it to their distribution channels.
Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.