A few years ago, streaming felt simple: one platform and unlimited content. Now it feels more fragmented.

Everyone cites this fact usually with the immediate follow up of "we should just go back to that!". It completely ignores why that existed, and why we can't go back.

For a few years Netflix had everything we all wanted to watch and it was cheap. It isn't either of these to things anymore because the only reason Netflix had all that cheap great content was that "streaming licensing" for shows from studios was so absurdly cheap because studios were almost giving it away for free because there was no market for it. Studios made their money from broadcast TV advertising, cable subscriptions, and DVD sales. Streaming revenue was a rounding error size. It barely showed up on financial reports.

This meant that Netflix was able to buy streaming rights for so much high quality content at a tiny tiny price. However, as soon as it started taking off studios noticed. Consumers were canceling cable, not buying DVDs anymore, and instead switching their eyeballs and attention to this "streaming" thing. So studio revenue was falling in their traditional safe sectors and they had virtually given away the streaming rights to Netflix in long multi-year agreements. Netflix was able to be an awesome customer experience for 5-7 years.

However, as soon as the long term licensing deals at the tiny cost started expiring, studios either set up their own streaming services to raking in the revenue, or charge Netflix obscenely high rates for the same content they used to get for pennies. Netflix had to start raising their rates to cover the higher licensing fees, and even then lots of the shows we like left because the studio wanted their own service.

The model that used to pay content in the past (cable, broadcast TV, DVD sales) is largely dead, and studio need to make their money on streaming as a primary source of revenue to survive these days. So that's how we got where we are today, and we're not going back to the early days of Netflix which had everything and was cheap that we all loved.