How did we remove the cost of the physical cable network? They still have to support all of that bandwidth, just over a different format. Plus, most people today also demand these services are without ads, so what traditionally paid for more of the content side has to be made up on the subscription side.
Somehow it worked fine with everything under one roof for low price, until Netflix streaming contracts expired. Something tells me that the change has nothing to do with true costs, and everything to do with an attempt to extract more short-term profit from the IP, regardless of the ultimate damage it will cause to streaming space.
When all of that content was already paid for via traditional networks, sure. But when everyone is transitioning to streaming, stuff's gotta get paid for.
