people who write newspaper articles, etc.. still need to get paid They sure do. But seeing the majority out there does want to see ads or doesn't care about se

people who write newspaper articles, etc.. still need to get paid They sure do. But seeing the majority out there does want to see ads or doesn't care about seing them, it's not like they won't get paid at all. And indeed that majority won't pay for content but there are others who do, and it's not impossible to make a living out of it: there are proper independent online-only news channels out there with no ads and paid by their subscribers (plus a bunch of government subsidies usually). just like a la carte TV, I think we'd find out that is much more expensive than we know. Assuming you mean Netflix and the likes: that is actually way cheaper now than what 'a la carte' used to be for me. 20 years ago when I wanted to choose what I looked at on a screen, I'd be looking at DVD rental because there wasn't much of an alternative here. Or maybe even not an alternative at all, don't remember exactly, but there was just cable TV and apart from standard channels you could get some extra (a porn channel, a sports channel), but that's still not 'a la carte'. Anyway: I easily paid twice what Netflix costs me now per month, every week.