About 40% of Americans have cut back on streaming services in the last three months because of financial concerns, according to a recent report
Americans are quitting subscription streaming services in droves as the cost of living continues to climb, a recent report has found.
Streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have become increasingly popular in recent years, but Deloitte’s 2026 Digital Media Trends report, released late last month, shows how Americans are getting frustrated over the cost to have their favorite movies and TV shows at the click of a button.
“As the cost of everyday essentials like food and housing remain high, many consumers are reevaluating their budgets and cutting back on nonessential expenditures,” Deloitte said in its survey results. “At the same time, prices for media and entertainment services continue to climb.”
I don’t care how much they try to make TV show seasons into events, they’ll never really be events like in the past. Same with movies. Like if movies aren’t hitting event status anymore, TV sure isn’t and that’s the key to this. FOMO for popular traditional media (Im including stuff like Netflix here as a successor to TV) looks way down to me compared to the pre-mainstream internet culture era.
The last huzzahs for event FOMO media to me seemed like Breaking Bad season 5, Game of Thrones, and Endgame. After that it’s been a rapid progression to everyone watching/listening/reading whatever they want at whatever pace they want. I don’t need to be rolling media subscriptions every month. Some months I’ll be busy doing outdoor sports or gardening. Then some months I’ll sub and bing stuff. Then off to something else. Thing for me is the amount of months I want to binge TV/movies has been in decline for years now
Social media also for me broke my ability to have any sort of idealism towards performers. Actors are stupid assholes. They’re athletes with better vocabulary and image maintenance. I used to watch a lot of boxing and MMA, no surprise that these guys are incredibly stupid and often terrible people. Athletes and wealthy/rich artist/performers are leftist by word and image, conservative to hyper conservative where it actually really matters. Not even just the super rich ones, the ones with power like film societies that run big film festivals and art galleries. Leftist persona, operationally conservative, in a voting booth conservative
In addition to the curtain being torn away “cultural events” like GoT would require people to feel connected and everyone in charge seems to be doing their level best to tear us all apart.
That is by design and helps to consolidat control until it doesn’t.