> went around and made exclusive deals and forced us back into the same monthly amounts

I've said this for years but most people probably don't watch more than 2 streamers / month every month. Pay for one month at a time and be pleasantly surprised at how many months you don't pay for 1 or more that you're paying for now.

Made me think, is there an opportunity to build a management layer for this? Handle subscribing and cancelling automatically when you want to watch certain things? Would probably be blocked pretty fast but amusing to think about.

There is an astute sibling comment by 'secretballot that is [dead]. Turn on showdead in your HN profile to see (/vouch) for it.

It's not just exclusive deals. It's piecemeal deals. Just look at what you have to do to stream all of Pokemon. https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...

A decent cable package was around $150/mo in the 90's, before streaming took hold. That's for scheduled programming only, and always with lots of ads.

Do you really think we're worse off today? Is anyone paying close to a 90's cable bill for their various streaming services? And is the quality the same as we endured back then?

I never crossed $100 / month with cable + internet, that sounds like the package with many extras

You are right - I'm thinking of the package with internet. But TV alone was around $100 to get the good channels (not HBO, but Comedy Central and MTV etc) plus the absurd premium I paid for the privilege of watching MLB games for my home team.