I haven't read newspapers or magazines in a long, long time, and TV shows I could easily live without (don't watch any in close to a year), especially if we had indie shows with interesting business models to replace them. I'd gladly pay for my content, but I think there's other models to be explored without appealing to ads. Ads are everywhere because they're easy to put to work, and the payout is potentially really high (if you're ok with helping big corps, their investors, and the centralization of wealth.)

> Every TV show, magazine or newspaper you liked, watched or read is the result of advertising.

No it isn't. Aside from that which I pay for through Netflix (no ads), I pretty much only watch and listen to the various BBC outlets (no ads, and I pay my license fee). I pay for Spotify and Audible and I buy CDs. I like paying money for things because I also hate advertising.

It has. It's also the reason why alternative ways of financing the content aren't being widely explored. And it's not like you're not still paying for those TV shows and magazine's, indirectly and inefficiently and fueling the brainscrambling agencies along the way. TANSTAAFL.

> Every TV show, magazine or newspaper you liked, watched or read is the result of advertising.

Unless you like/watch/read (for example) TV shows on premium cable, Consumer Reports, etc.

Taking the internet as a whole, I think what ads contribute negatively more than offsets what small businesses and independent publishers gain from, well, existing and surviving because of ads. If that wasn't an option, we'd be forced to come up with more intelligent business models that would also tend to respect more the end user (i.e. so I'm not the product).

Making ad revenue, e.g. from Google, means you're reinforcing the big corporations who really need to market themselves through ads--those are the ones who could not live without ads (they need the constant intrusive, paid-for flow of unwilling eyeballs to keep their investors happy), not the independ publishers (who I think could.) Niche ad networks are alright, but nevertheless they contribute to making it easy not to think hard (and work hard) to pursue alternate business models.