I wouldn't say HBO became "as terrible as the free channels". I would say perhaps HBO is now as bad as the free channels once were, and the free channels are wo

I wouldn't say HBO became "as terrible as the free channels". I would say perhaps HBO is now as bad as the free channels once were, and the free channels are worse than ever. The last time I visited my grandmother I saw a few minutes of daytime network TV out of the corner of my eye and good god, I don't have anything else to compare it to. It reminds me of an article I read a long time ago about the continual decay of pretty much any publishing organization. It showed magazines when they were new, and the same magazines the year before they went out of business. At the end, the magazines were 75% ads, 25% "content". TV is the same way. At some point in the future, some new competitor will come in promising all the things HBO used to deliver. And in time they'll decay as well.