The metamorphosis of the television industry is now complete. It may have taken 85 years, but the U.S. television industry finally managed to get what it wanted from the start — getting paid for showing paid commercials.
The traditional TV business model was flawed from the get-go. At the cinema, patrons had to pay an entry fee to watch a film, but television was free. Business was generated by selling airtime to prickly, demanding companies. It was not an ideal situation. Remedies included the creation of the home video industry and later, the development of a cable TV system with a three-tier business model: subscription, advertising, and carriage or retransmission fees.
It was an improved mouse trap, but not an ideal one. Then streaming entered the TV screen with a big money-making improvement. At first it experimented with binge viewing, but that proved to be too expensive to sustain, and forced streaming providers to compensate by first adding commercial time (or an increase of subscription fees for viewers who were willing to pay more for zero commercial interruptions), and later by returning to the traditional (and more economical) appointment television, which still included commercials and, naturally, kept subscription fees.
So there you have it. Now the U.S. has a perfect TV money-making system with subscription fees and advertising revenue by mixing the best of the traditional and the modern business models.
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