Instead, I believe abundance of supply does. In the past, there were simply fewer things to subscribe to, so a median family would pay for the local newspaper and cable -- and generations before then, just the newspaper. Rich professionals and the elite would pay for one of the premier papers, and finance paper, and an arts magazine. Fans with particular interests would pay for one or two other serials.
These days, content is everywhere, and much of it is available for free. This is impossible to compete with on price, and has been shown to be hard to compete with on quality and depth of coverage, because it chops off large portions of the market who may have paid for convenience of distribution in the past, but now they don't have to. This leaves even more pressure on those willing to pay. In this kind of situation, the classic resolution is consolidation, which is already underway.
Mike the Millennial is strapped for cash, and so won't pay for content directly. Alice the Advertiser wants to convince Mike to buy her products, so she places ads with Nick the Newspaper. Nick gets money from Alice, to provide Mike with content for no cost.
But doesn't Alice expect a return on that advertising spend? Doesn't Mike ultimately pay Alice more than he would have if he had just paid Nick directly?
I know it's a hell of a lot more complicated than this, but aggregated over all advertising industry revenue, and aggregated over all content subscription revenue, it seems that the ultimate price of advertising (once it percolates down to the consumer) will always be greater than an equivalent cost of subscriptions.