You're also not "basically forced to watch them".
HBO operates with a margin of 33% (1.7Billion income on 4.9 Billion of revenue). That's healthy, but it isn't "totally insane". There isn't much room to spare before they'd have to sacrifice quality. That'd be quite sad, considering the last decade is generally regarded as a golden age of TV.
What other method do you suggest for me to stay up to date on pop culture, considering I do not want to support it?
Now I don't watch TV anymore, or ever so rarely. I've converted the time to reading. It changed my life in dramatically good ways —pun very much intended. There's a time for everything, and quite frankly after some time it's like you've watched it all, you could predict plots and even lines (sometimes it feels as though all authors just get inspired from their peers and much of the writing/directing feels recycled).
There's no "keeping up to date" with pop culture imho, at some point it becomes anthropological. You just overgrow pop culture beyond a certain amount of experience. You could actually produce it for that matter. As it relates to the medium, thus technology, I'm thinking it will evolve once again with VR/AR/etc.
Most productions that people watch have somewhere between hundreds and tens of thousands of people working on them. Almost none of them are rich, including most of the producers, directors, and stars of your favorite shows--who are usually locked into contracts they signed before their shows got big, and shows almost never get big. The number of people who will get rich from a given TV show or movie is between zero and almost zero.
99% of show business is folks trying to get by, same as anywhere else. Most people in show business could earn more doing almost anything else. Almost all of them make less than some kid in Silicon Valley building Tinder for Dogs. Programmers at Netflix make far, far more than almost every artist and even many of the financiers, and few here would complain about that.
Pay for your content.
Also, we should all benefit from economies of scale, not just the film producers.
I think I've seen that scene... Clockwork Orange, right? http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/clock...
Perhaps... perhaps you might choose a different phrasing than "forced to watch"?
In a free market with intelligent consumers, these people would not make quite so much, but it would still be a significant amount.
People that can uphold a willing suspension of disbelief are rare enough, but those who can invoke it are the ones truly deserving of that reasonable income. Those folks aren't always the actors. Sometimes it's the writers, directors, or even the make-up or foley artists. Those people that don't get face time in front of the public might not always get the recognition they deserve, and they're the ones we really want to be paid for their art. But there are a lot of people shaving money off the wad before it gets to them, so putting too much cash in their hands is a small price to pay so that those who deserve it can actually make a living.
I don't think that way. Everybody deserves a reasonable income, but what these "artists" make is totally insane. The only reason I watch their movies is because with the help of their fans, they have created an artificial monopoly around their persona and I am basically forced to watch them. In a free market with intelligent consumers, these people would not make this much.