People do it all the time. Cable tv.
"There's nothing new under the sun"...
Who told you that? Cable TV had ads on practically every channel for the first 30 years of its history, since it was just collecting and transmitting all the local broadcast stations. And even when cable-only stations came out, they often had ads. The second cable-only TV station, TBS, had ads from day one!
HBO was an outlier because it didn't have ads. It wasn't the norm.
Which means it is time for the alternative to rise again - piracy.