Streaming is recreating TV, rather than replacing it

More than a decade after Netflix blew up television's model with "House of Cards," streaming services more closely resemble the business they disrupted. This matters because streaming rose to prominence by providing a refuge from all the things consumers hated about the cable TV bundle. But as streaming matures, consumers are feeling the same pains they sought to avoid. Streaming is an industry that's caught between two worlds: The still-profitable-but-fading legacy TV model and a streaming future that has yet to be fully realized. Slowing subscriber growth has led streamers and the Wall Street analysts that follow them to shift their focus to profitability, and that's forced streamers to introduce features like live events and tiered pricing, creating a less consumer-friendly environment. "With [subscriber] growth stalling, the most established platforms have raced to raise prices, introduce ad tiers and cut costs to prove that streaming can in fact be a decent business," MoffettNathanson analysts wrote. Overall, the cable bundle didn't die. It evolved.