The ad tier costs like $5/mo, of course it has to be supplemented with ads. You can't run a huge network that's also constantly generating modern, big budget content off a few million people paying $5/mo. It may seem like a grotesque amount to us, but studios are greedy as fuck with their licensing costs (which is also why every platform is trying to fill their libraries with only their own IP, but they quickly realized just now expensive it is to be constantly making TV shows and movies).

The bottom line is, streaming was doomed to have ads eventually. It's not a sustainable model now that every single entertainment company wants a bigger slice of the pie. Netflix was on borrowed time and we all just got used to the model that they pioneered on borrowed money (literally, they're billions in debt). In the end, streaming will become just like cable TV, just like we had before. The main difference being everything is permanently VOD and we can pick and choose networks vs being forced to accept all of them.

Don't take this to mean that I am defending them. I'm just spelling out reality. I think if those workers getting paid millions per movie or season of show they work on took less money, it'd make the model more sustainable. But I doubt that'll ever happen. Hell, we have millionaire YouTubers/streamers/etc, heh.

[–] krimsonbun@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

I never said anything about her paying the highest tier, I was saying it's unreasonable to run ads on a paid service. It's not right to make people pay in both ways, it should be one or the other. If your model isn't sustainable that's your problem not the consumers. However I really doubt hulu is going bankrupt and has no other choice but to run ads.