did the same happen to film and tv with Netflix? Asking because I really have no idea.
Hasn't it? I don't have Netflix and I don't watch TV, but as far as I can tell from the internet and people I know, that certainly seems to be the case. You hear about all these Netflix shows that nobody watches, you turn on the TV and start flipping through a hundred channels and can't find anything worth your attention before you finally settle on watching Discovery's show about chimps in the zoo, just because they seem about as miserable as you feel. Hell, I
have TV as part of my internet package, but I never watch it.
The thing about cable models is that they incentivise the old "there's nothing better on" model of consumption. You're not gonna go out and buy a videogame or a DVD just because it's inoffensively mediocre, it needs to appeal to you somehow, but if you're already paying ten bucks a month for a subscription package and you've got some time to kill, you "might as well" settle for the least shit thing on even though you know it'll leave you with a feeling of ennui by the end.
Meanwhile, the people running the crap factory have a stable income that's unlikely to vary short of collossal fuckups in adverse market conditions, and their only remit is to occasionally make their crap slightly less crap than the competition's crap. One or two tentpoles will keep the entire thing running 'cause you won't cancel whatever service has Game of Thrones on, and under that umbrella they'll keep hiring their friends and associates to make the rest of the crap you've never heard about and wouldn't watch if you were the one getting paid instead. And the scope of the business makes it unrealistic for the shareholder to be able exercise any genuine control over its course even in the unlikely event that they do know anything beyond "number go up."
And that's how, ten years from now, you're gonna be playing Assassin's Creed 23. "Because I pay for it anyway and there's nothing better on."