I’m old, so many may not relate. I remember when the big selling point of this newfangled “cable TV” thing was zero ads. Can you imagine that?

Yeah, I have Prime for the savings on shipping. Got the Kodi addon for watching Prime, never used it except to watch The Expanse a few years ago. Would have been fucking enraged if I had seen ads cut into that. Fuck am I paying for?!

Cable tv wasn’t invented to have zero ads . The original selling point of cable tv was to provide broadcast tv to those that couldn’t pick up OTA broadcasts.

I feel like you weren’t there, in that time and place. Or maybe you were in some weird pocket where OTA wasn’t available? Can’t remember anyone bitching about lack of antennae service. Yeah, it could be sketchy, but I think most of us could drag in ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS.

I grew up in the 70’s and had cable TV as soon as long as I could remember and it was the exact same broadcasts people that lived in DC or Baltimore got, we just got them from cable since the mountains we lived in prevented any OTA from getting through. And I am pretty sure I wasn’t alone with my cable TV.

In 1968, 6.4% of Americans had cable television. The number increased to 7.5% in 1978. By 1988, 52.8% of all households were using cable. The number further increased to 62.4% in 1994. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television)

I think one could argue they invented cable TV so that more people could see ads, not to stop showing ads.