For me it’s felt like years of excessive mid from Netflix in particular.
There are some good shows out there, but it feels like there’s 2-3 shows worth watching a year at this point, and that’s across all streaming services.
Agreed. Our household rotates through streaming services. We'll watch the content we want on it in a month or 3, then drop it. In 6 months or a year later we'll come back if there's more content. If not, we don't re-subscribe until there is.
this + the risk that anything vaguely interesting will be given the axe (often within weeks of the first season being released with positive critical & audience reception)
I can't say this enough. Stop paying them for shit content while also having ads shoved down your throat. There will be no limit to the enshittification if people don't stop paying for the pleasure.
This yet another place that streaming is superior to cable. The same quality decline happened to cable, but your only choice was "cable" or "no cable", all or nothing. Further, unsubscribing to cable meant fighting through phone queues, returning hardware to physical locations in inconvenient places or shipping the hardware back.
Now, if a streaming service goes to crap, you cancel it in about 30 seconds with a few clicks, and if another streaming services has better content, you sub to that one, also in a few clicks.