Part of the whole premise of how the Internet was supposed to disrupt the publishing business was disintermediation - i.e. cutting out the middleman. Instead of everyone selling their works through a distributor, they'd sell them direct to the public. And that's basically what every streaming service turned into - including modern Netflix.
Cable companies used to be good, too. The shenanigans they resorted to with "packages" and price discrimination were the result of the same pricing pressure from the TV networks that killed 2012 Netflix. When Netflix refused to play that game, the TV networks decided to disrupt Netflix, because they own the content and Netflix owns nothing.
Sometimes innovation sucks.
A true neutral streaming service would be like a pirate streaming site: available globally, no geofencing, and one price for everything. 2012 Netflix showed that it can work.
With streaming, the middle man is cut out (versus cable) which makes a huge difference. Rather than buying a package of 100 channels from the cable company, I can instead subscribe to individual packages of content direct from much smaller packages of channels. Although I am paying more for the content I want, I save money because I'm not forced to subscribe to dozens of channels I will never watch.
That’s exactly what Hulu was meant to be. It’s a fair thought that well-positioned people shared, but it turns out it’s not so simple.
Disney/HBO content is worth a lot more - they both have multiple billion dollar franchises - than Netflix.
Because Netflix was a better service than cable, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. The change came from TV companies wanting their own streaming service too, basically bringing back the cable model to the internet.
If they don't want to depend on Netflix, why don't they cooperate to build a unified and neutral streaming service where they can share the revenue? Every Internet user would want to subscribe to that.