Think about what your local cable company charges for HBO. They have no advertising and programming is pretty good. Back in the day it was $20/month, now it's something close to $10/mo, right?
What would your cable bill look like if every single channel was $10/month?
Of course, Netflix is well worth the subscription and if you don't watch a lot of TV, it has enough content to keep you entertained for a while. But I've noticed that I discuss HBO shows more with my friends/family than Netflix ones.
A former Netflix tech guy once told me that "People get Netflix for the movies and stay for the TV shows." Though that's probably less true than it used to be given Netflix Originals and a pretty wide recognition that their streaming movie catalog is limited. Today it's probably the Originals that drive the purchasing (as with HBO).
Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Sex and the City, Entourage, etc., all well before Netflix did originals.
Netflix has obviously run with the idea though. I'd love to see Netflix and HBO merge actually.
HBO was doing that long before Netflix had original programming and Netflix, fairly overtly -- as in, I'm pretty sure I remember Netflix execs saying this -- was following HBO's arc rather than vice versa.
It happened.
Lately I'd agree, but a few years ago that didn't have much and it was mostly high quality. So many of netflixs originals seem to fall into the super hero category that I'm not interested in.
Which ones were those? Are you sure they were Netflix originals?
It is true that, if you start slicing out ESPN, A&E, etc. it would theoretically be possible to subscribe to an overall lower cable bill but the cable cos would almost certainly raise per-channel (or mini-bundle) pricing to compensate.
Everyone passed on Mad Men except this little movie-rerun channel called AMC. Would Walking Dead have happened without it?