

No. Cable brought improved picture over broadcast signals, brought programming to underserved areas, and had a greater number and diversity of channels. Those fundamental improvements over the prior technology never went away.
You can complain that cable TV got more expensive over time, but you can say the same thing about cars and houses and health care.
Some cable channels are still commercial free, all of them are since the DVR was invented 25 years ago. Watermarks suck, a DVR can’t erase those. But nothing cable has done comes close to the fuckery we’ve gotten with surveillance and tracking, targeted ads, unskippable ads that is the present and future of streaming.