You can, they sell "just dumb panels" for commercial signage applications. They cost way more. Smart TVs selling your eyeballs and your data make them cheaper than dumb panels. And since most consumers buy on price, they also get the advantage of scale. So they're more expensive and they do less, their only market is a handful of privacy geeks who aren't going to just not connect it to the internet - a tiny market.
https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...
> A January interview on The Verge's podcast with Vizio's chief technology officer, Bill Baxter, did a great job illuminating how this works.
> "This is a cutthroat industry," Baxter said. "It's a 6% margin industry. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost."
> "It's not just about data collection. It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV."
> "You sell some movies, you sell some TV shows, you sell some ads, you know," he said. "It's not really that different than the Verge website."