Look at the history of cable TV. When it appeared it was also promoted as "no advertising, better shows".
Although this may not have been true at the beginning, it arguably did grow to meet that standard. Cable TV is still fairly young in the grand scheme of things, though, so I would say there isn't enough information yet to conclude whether a TV paywall improved content overall.
Also, it's important to remember that TV relies on the data-weak and fairly inaccurate Nielsen ratings in order to understand its demographics and what they like (and it's even weaker and more inaccurate for pay cable). This leads to generally conservative decisions regarding prog...
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