For years, it felt like we were enjoying a revolution in the entertainment industry. The meteoric rise of streaming services and the decline of old media empires that followed was celebrated for providing consumers with cheaper, higher-quality content while giving them what they have wanted for decades: the ability to pick and choose their own programming.

Entire generations cut cable, if they even had cable to cut, and lived in a comparative paradise of not having to worry about paying hundreds of dollars for thousands of useless channels just so that they could get that one premium channel they actually wanted. Bloated cable companies that gleefully held us hostage with one-size-fits-all bundles stuffed with channels no one actually watched? They were on the down-and-out as we were sold choice.