Recently, I watched the 1942 film Casablanca in my Film Studies class. As I normally do after watching a movie, I went online and read through the thousands of reviews that were posted. With Casablanca specifically, I noticed a common consensus among reviewers: it could never be recreated in the modern age of television. This sparked my curiosity about how the current age of TV has completely changed, making me question why that is.
In 2007, Netflix made a major switch from its DVD-by-mail business to its modern-day streaming service, providing users with immediate access to a vast catalog of shows and movies from their devices. What followed was a major cultural shift in how we consume media, with 83% of American adults now reporting they utilize streaming services.
However, in 2025, we left the golden age of streaming far behind us and it seems we’ve entered an era where TV is simultaneously the most underwhelming and overwhelming it’s ever been. This new age of TV can be attributed to only one factor: the rise in popularity of streaming platforms. Today, subscription-based streaming services have ruined the TV-watching experience with new additional costs, the integration of the binge model, and lower quality content.
When streaming services were first introduced, they were marketed as a more affordable option than cable TV. However, over time, prices have drastically increased. At its launch, Netflix cost $8 per month. Now, it costs a whopping $18. Netflix isn’t the only one to have had a major price hike. Services like Disney+, Apple TV+ and Peacock have all nearly doubled their original subscription prices.
It is also common to subscribe to multiple services to access all of the trending shows and movies. In order to attract viewers, streaming platforms are now largely made up of original and exclusive content. Due to many shows and movies only being available on specific streaming services, consumers often find subscribing to just one service isn’t enough to watch all of their desired content. This is especially true for teens who feel socially pressured into keeping up with the media everyone’s talking about. When pairing the significantly raised subscription prices and the cumulative cost of subscribing to multiple services, these “cheaper alternatives” are quickly becoming a financial burden to TV-watchers.
Additionally, the binge-watch model, a streaming service strategy that allows viewers to watch multiple episodes back-to-back, has compromised the art of suspense when it comes to TV. Oftentimes, when streaming platforms release a new season of a show, they drop the entire season at once. The downside to this is that shows are forgotten about quickly. Industry watchdogs report that bingeable shows typically have a decline in relevance eight weeks after their initial release, while shows with weekly drops stay relevant up until nine weeks after their finale.
Take FX’s The Bear, for example. The show’s highly anticipated fourth season was released on June 25. While the season received many praises at first, by July 1, conversation about it had already begun to die down on social media.
Weekly drops of episodes give viewers time to come up with their own theories and discuss the show, making it a shared cultural event that people will talk about for weeks. Unfortunately, with the binge model, audiences are no longer waiting for the next episode to drop. Viewers move through made-to-binge series at different rates, with some watching it all at once and others spacing out the episodes. Fan interaction is thus discouraged in order to avoid spoilers about the show. This eliminates the prolonged fanfare around the show, leaving the series to become just another fleeting trend.
In my Film Studies class, we learn to appreciate just how amazing scripted media can be; however, it’s been difficult to do so with much of the content being produced by streaming services. To appeal to new demographics, many streaming platforms have prioritized quantity over quality, releasing as much bingeable content as possible. This leaves an oversaturation in rushed and cheaply made content. Still, due to their easy accessibility, these shows and movies often draw in large audiences. For example, Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, infamous for its bad writing, garnered a total of 903.4 million views upon its past three season premieres.
The attention this type of content consistently captures has led to yearly renewals of mediocre shows and sequels to lackluster movies being made, making it difficult to discover fresh and exciting content. As these low-quality movies and shows are often the most popular, they’re usually plastered on the front pages of these platforms. This leaves actually creative content buried in the thousands of available titles and an entertainment industry led by a slew of disappointments.
Any benefits streaming services offered upon their initial releases have been greatly outweighed by how these platforms have degraded the TV-watching experience. While these services may appear convenient, this sentiment has held considerably less true over time. We, as viewers, have the power to reverse the negative impact these platforms have brought. By rejecting poor quality content, we can send out a clear message of our demands for well-crafted, creative entertainment. What we do as viewers ultimately determines whether TV will evolve into a meaningful medium of art or continue down the path of becoming mindless slop.
