Well we went full circle. YouTube and Netflix killed the tv because they were young rebels that challenged status quo and had no ads, and ads on tv went very long. Now YouTube, Netflix and all others just went to shit because of annoying and long ads, or paying extra to skip ads, gathering of usage data, spying on users, selling data, censoring, and building huge monopolies.

I don’t think your gripe is with Netflix on this. The reason they were able to offer mountains of commercial free content was because content owners didn’t think “streaming licensing rights” were worth very much, so they sold them very cheaply. When content owners saw their DVD sales dry up and the started looking where their audiences went, and found them subscribing to Netflix. So when the content licensing contract renewals came up, the content owners jacked up the prices to high heaven. Netflix had the choice to either drop content or raise prices. They did a chunk of both, then again at the next renew, and again, etc.

Scripted content is generally expensive. The alternative is the dirt-cheap-to-produce “reality TV”. If you wonder why you’re seeing so much more “reality tv” this is why.