All roads lead to cable

In their fight to win the war for our attention, streamers are re-creating cable from first principles.

by

Charles Pulliam-Moore

Sep 20, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC

AFP via Getty Images

All roads lead to cable

In their fight to win the war for our attention, streamers are re-creating cable from first principles.

by

Charles Pulliam-Moore

Sep 20, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC

Charles Pulliam-Moore

is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

This isThe Stepback,a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on streaming platforms, FAST channels, and the future of entertainment,follow Charles Pulliam-Moore.The Stepbackarrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in forThe Stepbackhere.

How it started

Before Netflix fully committed to becoming a streaming service andleaving DVDs behind, the company experimented with the idea ofgiving its subscribers a physical boxthat could access high-resolution digital copies of movies. Films would have been downloaded to the box in the evening and become available to users the next day. But Netflix changed course around 2006 once it saw people were flocking to watch grainy viral videos on YouTube. Though Netflix had already been making waves by disrupting the movie rental business, pivoting to streaming turned the company into a powerhouse that posed a threat to traditional cable services.

People loved being able to instantly access large catalogs of movies from their computers without having to sign up for expensive cable plans. Once the company got into original series in 2012, its binge model helped generate buzz and drive new sign-ups. As Netflix’s user base continued to grow in those early years, other companies, like Amazon, Disney, and NBC, realized there was money to be made by launching (or contributing to) streaming services of their own. And while cable didn’t completely disappear as streaming took off, the number of people subscribed to cable plansbegan (and has continued) to dropover the past decade.

How it’s going

Streaming is nowthe most common waythat people consume films and television, and many people subscribe to multiple services in order to be able to access all of the things they want to watch. The proliferation of streaming services has led to an explosion of media, but the streaming market’s maturation has also made it much more difficult for companiesto find and keep new subscribers.

Platforms have tried to get ahead of that issue and stay on top of their financeswith countless price hikesthat have made it much more expensive to keep up with shows compared to when streamers first hit the scene. In hopes of courting more price-sensitive customers, many companies have introduced ad-supported tiers to their paid services. But some have also launched free ad-supported television (FAST) services that look and feel alotlike traditional cable.

Unlike regular streamers where constant ads and endless choices have become an annoyance, FAST services like Tubi, Roku, and Pluto TV keep things relatively simple. In exchange for watching a few commercials, users can browse through entertainment libraries or choose to focus onchannels that are dedicated to specific series. When you look at the way that most FAST services present their channels in long lists, it’s easy to get the sense that they’ve been intentionally designed to mimic old cable interfaces. That might speak to entertainment executives beginning to think that icon-dense carousels aren’t necessarily the best way to show off a streamer’s offerings. It could also be a sign thatviewers have grown wearyof the algorithms streamers use to suggest what content to watch. But it also feels like as the streaming wars have carried on, newer companies realized that the old guard got a few things right.

What happens next

Because people still want to keep up with all of the new stuff coming out of the paid streamers without having to individually sign up for every service, we’re probably going to see even more bundling in the future. Bundling gives consumers a way to save money on their entertainment budgets, and almost every single one of themajor streaming companieshas offeredsome kind of dealthat gives youaccess to one or more of their competitors. Similar to FAST channels, streaming bundles are reminiscent of the tiered cable packages telecoms sell, and some companies, like Verizon and T-Mobile, include access to streaming bundles as perks for their subscribers.

More individual streaming platforms will likely roll outalways-on channelsthat are designed to give people a way to watch certain series without having to choose a particular episode for themselves. For services likeHBO Max, that would be almost like a return to the way HBO’s various channels air on terrestrial television. In addition to helping viewers deal with decision paralysis,always-on channels could also helpstreaming services ensure that user engagement stays high. And if every streamer in the game decides that paywalled always-on channels, bundles, and even more price increases are the way forward, it’s really going to feel like we’ve come full circle back to cable.

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