A long time ago they just beamed TV shows through the air, and if you had this fancy apparatus called an antenna ( which you could make in the basement from some scrap wood and bits of wire) you could watch it all for free. Then someone came up with the bright idea of letting people pay for a special wired service instead of wasting their time watching all the ads that paid for the free stuff. Then I guess they needed more money so they brought back the ads even though people were still paying for the content. Then they designed special equipment that they could charge you an arm and a leg to rent so you could get the service you were paying for. And now it seems like we're headed to you have to pay for every channel you want individually.
I guess in television progress means finding ways to get more money out of people for the same amount of service.