Because for every one person like you and me with zero ad tolerance, there’s hundreds, thousands of plebs who can’t be bothered to drop the service. It’s the inverse of the whale (re. microtransactions) problem.

Because of the people they loose due to the price hike, more will stay for the new price.

They’re banking on their service still being better. In the short term they assume their particular selection of content will provide some inertia to your decision to move, and long term they expect all of the other options are going to do the same thing. Eventually, you’ll only be able to stream with commercials, and they’ll be back to the balance of their content being the only deciding factor.

ironically I only use the free add supported ones except for amazon but thats more due to my wife.

Because the “you wouldn’t steal a car” nonsense scares a lot of people off

Because some people want to support the creators of content but digital downloads from iTunes or whatever are more expensive than getting a month of a streaming service

Because there is a level of convenience of having thousands of hours of content at your fingertips without having to store content locally or finding it on a “dodgy” website. Setting up torrents / usenet is more work than giving someone your credit card number

Because a lot of people don’t know where to find content and if they did they don’t know the difference between a 480p avi vs a 2160p HDR DV MKV and get confused with torrents and file formats and how to get them on their TV.

Because - at the moment - the ads aren’t that bad, I got one ad at the start and one episode in the middle of an episode of Gen V - obviously they’ll add more until it’s as bad as cable but they’re not there yet.

Television does it

You might ditch, but they have enough data that says enough other people aren’t going to.

Just remember whenever you’re annoyed by something and think “why is this a thing? This annoys me so it shouldn’t happen”, there’s thousands of other people who can live with it or just don’t give a shit.

Streaming services have a catastrophic problem they didn’t see coming.

As they massively expanded the viewing market, they also gave very accurate viewing metrics compared to broadcast TV.

Also, the many, MANY offerings cut the viewing pie into smaller pieces.

And this is the expectation, mostly because while you might stay with a super hit like GoT, they’re super expensive, and huge risks if they don’t take off (see acolyte). Cost sensitive people are likely to subscribe for the season then cancel, or just subscribe the month the season finishes.

The alternative is to try to hook you on a bunch of shows, which means having a ton of them and hoping they nail your niche. People are less willing to do this, but it works if you have more disposable income, or value streaming more.

In any case, they can’t afford all the shows they have to put on, it’s all or nothing now, before they might watch lost on ABC one night, then CBS walker Texas ranger might let the kid fall on the ground the next, but now you have to keep them entertained most days, that’s a shit-ton of content. HBO has it worse, they’re losing their old cable revenue, and their productions are stupid expensive, and they’re one of the winners. Disney has it even worse because disney+ cannibalizes both their cinema sales and they have to put up their crown jewels, star wars and the mcu, all on the same service, devaluing both. Fortunately focusing on kids programming helps because parents basically have to have Disney+ just as a matter of course.

This barely worked on broadcast because the different channels could share the load and cut the ad pie into larger pieces,

If they could count on must-watch blockbusters (ie GoT, which really hurt them when they screwed the landing and killed rewatchability), they could pull it off, but that’s so risky, it’s betting everything on one spin of the roulette wheel.

You are a statistic. The question isn’t do you exist but how many of you exist. When there is enough money to be made by serving people like you with fewer ads someone will do it. Until then though you are not worth the money it costs too keep you so good riddance.

of course the above is why some demographics don’t watch much tv. They somewhat care but not enough to serve those demographict.

may I suggest you take up tatting, mandolin, welding, bike riding… there are a long list of other things you can do with your time either on a theme/variation from above or not mentioned. These are all hobbies and you can find some to fill all that time you free o up.

I’ve ditched all of them except the Disney/Hulu bundle, and that’s only because Amex gives me back $7 a month of the cost.

Amazon Prime used to be okay as a Prime customer, but now you can’t watch a 24 minute show without seeing like five ads. I tried to watch an episode of Invincible and there were two ads before the show even started, two in the middle of the show, and one at the end. It’s freaking insane.

I barely even watch video these days, I get way more mileage out of a good music service like Qobuz or Tidal.

My steamers don’t have any ads.

Because companies want more money and people get used to it.

Because they’re also going after piracy as hard as they can

Statistics. You’re still there and only complaining. I purged all subscription parasites from my life in 2019.

I live by the abstraction, “you can’t fix stupid in anyone else but yourself.” All you can do is tell others what you did with your one wallet vote and hope that others do the same at some critical mass.

They do it because you’re still there, and you care while they do not. You want to think you’re human. You’re not. You’re a new deck chair on a yacht if you’re lucky. Most likely, you’re no more than a liter or few of diesel.

You are just one drop in an ocean pal.