Streaming services are in dire straits – yet somehow I’m still forking out for seven | Emma Brockes

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu ... there's hardly anything to watch on any of them, but there's always a reason not to cancel

The first streaming service I subscribed to was Hulu, back in 2009. It was free, with very little content, so the effort-to-reward ratio of setting up a password was almost too extravagant to bother with. I guess Netflix came next - the first subscription service I paid for. Netflix had nothing much on it, either, back in 2011, but at $8 a month, the price point was so tempting it somehow seemed cheaper than free.

Then came Amazon Prime Video, included in the annual Prime package. At the time, my monthly cable bill was about $140 a month, and this new model offered a startling promise: not only to slash my bills, but to obviate the need to deal with Time Warner Cable ever, ever again.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist