There are so many streaming services these days, and they all want you to ante up something every month to access their programming. Many of them have a couple of compelling shows but not nearly enough good content to justify paying month after month.
When I learn that a streaming service has a show I want to see, I’ll often subscribe for one month (or sign up for the free trial if there is one), watch the one show and whatever else seems interesting, and then cancel the service before the month is up. In theory I could watch the best offerings of twelve different streaming services over the course of a year for the cost of just one.
I’ve used a seven-day free trial to Hulu to watch the long-delayed Season 4 of Veronica Mars, andsubscribed to a month of STARZ to watch Counterpart, the sci-fi thriller starring J.K. Simmons; Disney+ to watch Hamilton and The Mandalorian; and AMC Premier to watch NOS4A2. (I wouldn’t bother with that last one.)
We subscribe to HBO through our cable service, which gives us access to HBO Max, but if we didn’t I would have subscribed for a month just to watch Wonder Woman 1984 (which, as it turns out, would have been a bad investment).
Soon we’ll subscribe to another month of Disney+ to watch the second season of The Mandalorian.
The universe of streaming services is beginning to consolidate, and some of them are making huge investments in programming that might justify paying for them year-round. In the meantime the pay-TV world is catch-as-catch-can. You could waste hundreds of dollars a year if you signed up for whatever looked interesting and let it ride, but you’ll miss a lot of good television if you spurn the streaming services altogether.