chapotraphouse

That's assuming Capital exists as a single centrally planned homogenate, rather than a set of competing factions all warring over the stream of revenue that media consumers produce. We did once try something akin to this, with the Public Broadcasting Service. And it was very successful, at least for a little while, in its effort to command a large audience and manipulate public opinion along a liberal ideological view.

But now we have a much more Anarcho-Capitalist approach to infotainment. We've implemented a tiered and tranched distribution of media services, from Talk Radio on the bottom-of-the-barrel free feed to Pay-Per-View streaming services on the high end. They all serve the same fundamental role as Netflix/Youtube, but the lower tiers tend to have a more vulgar and poorly produced advertising methodology.

And people still consume these channels voraciously. No shortage of folks who will suffer through five minute YouTube ads or who eventually buckle to the "Please Pay Me!!" pop-ups that soft gate the service. Similarly, Netflix has no trouble maintaining a subscriber pool of a quarter billion registered accounts (with households averaging north of 2 viewers).

The payment model serves two purposes. It forces people to register their participation - through an online account - and allows digital tagging and tracking of consumption habits. It also provides a threat of deprivation to disobedient proles. If you don't clock in, you won't have enough money to pay your bills. That includes entertainment. The cost isn't particularly prohibitive, even to the poorest economic cohorts. But you are required to buy in and sign up and maintain the account, which puts an onus on people to keep in the good graces of the capitalist managers.

As a wise man once said, if you're good at something never do it for free.