I don't know that one NEEDS to watch any TV. Then again you don't NEED to be on the internet or hacker news. People also do things they want, not just what they need.

If I could buy a magical streaming service that only carries the two or three shows I care about at any one time that would be great, but that doesn't exist. But rather than actually paying for all the content I just end up subbing to Netflix and Anime Lab and pirating everything that's not there. (And I'm considering unsubbing from Netflix - they've slowly removed all of the non Netflix original stuff I care about)

Piracy bad I know I know, but there's a limit to how many hoops I'm willing to jump through before I give up and pirate stuff - legitimately finding out how to buy content I want to watch shouldn't be harder than torrenting it.

I don't know about what I need, but I guess I've decided there's no way in hell I'm paying for more than one. I feel like each little fiefdom demanding its little tribute is going to hurt them all in the long run, or at least I hope it does. Let the market consolidate into some kind of monopoly, dare I say it, since I'm usually against such things. If it's even possible at this point with how fragmented it is. Maybe the next generation aggregator/platform will come along and all these services will jump onboard it. Until then, I'm kind of leaning toward piracy or just plain abstinence. There are a lot of creative people out there making time-dependent art but the fact is, it's time-dependent art, which means I have to spend the time to watch it. Maybe more than once, in the case of the super detail-oriented ones like the Breaking Bad universe let's say. I notice when I skip all that shit, I get tons of learning-new-frameworks-and-languages done.

You only need more than one because of siloing. Would anybody be happy with one channel or one website. This is not music where all of the offerings have nearly identical catalogs. The problem is they silo so much that piracy becomes the only logical option.

Yes but one might watch a small selection of shows over many streaming services.

And even still, I know several people who fill every spare minute with streamed tv to keep their conscience busy.

Because streaming services have a limited selection. You might only be interested in a dozen shows and after a year you've watched everything you wanted.

Same goes with clothes. People like having choices, even tho they may never actually wear it.

It's more about all that you choose not to watch.

It depends on what shows people want to watch.