It used to be that the common model in the USA for tv was, one cable bundle with 500 channels. That has now evolved to a combination of

- cable bundles

- aggregate streams (Netflix, Prime, Apple TV)

- pay per view (Prime or YT TV)

And somehow all of these models now coexist.

Before the time you mention, the common model for TV was, you bought a TV, and you got as many channels as your antenna could pick up, all for free. Advertisers fought over the privilege of having access to your living room so much so that they sponsored whole shows, as they had with radio before TV. From this revenue, every local station was able to put together a news broadcast, and national networks broadcast the national news every evening, all for free as far as the viewer was concerned. This was the golden age of journalism, back when people believed the journalists [0].

Somehow all the media advances, the democratizing influence of the internet, the rise of social media, and the ubiquity of constant streams of news in various forms has just made the news more expensive and less trusted.

And, frankly, anyone even remotely considering microtransactions needs to take into account that one third of the population distrusts the media and another third gives it no credibility whatsoever—and money in the form of microtransactions would have to follow credibility, because nobody pays for what he believes is a lie.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-re...