Has Cable TV allways been awful?

Being Portuguese in the 90's meant we only had 4 channels. All of them national and all with a generalist agenda. The scene was even more bleak before I was born. We used to had only 2 channels, and both owned and funded by the government. In the same year I was born a 3rd channel was created and a new one a year later. So I was not around in those dark times. So dark they used to play the national anthem at a certain time and the channel ceased broadcasting until the next morning. The same four channels remained the only free TV for years to come. Untill the digital switch over the scene changed a little bit. We gained a few channels, now have 7 channels. Or do we?

The current grid is as follows:

1- RTP 1
2- RTP 2
3- SIC
4- TVI
5- AR TV
6- RTP 3
7- RTP Memória

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AR tv broadcasts when there are governament sessions, otherwise it's closed. RTP Memória its mostly re-reuns of older programs that used to broadcast on regular RTP1 and 2 and the 80s and 90s. And RTP 3 has more news on it and a few documentaries. In practice we only got more of the same or what we used to have. And i find that same issue affected cable TV too.

Growing up I didn't have cable TV. And even if I did it wouldn't really be cable TV as we know it today. Everyone I knew that had it should have a satellite dish in order to get other channels.
Back in the day it should have been a great deal to have such commodities. If you wanted to watch some kind of movie or foreign tv series you had to go to the movie rental store (remember those)? Being able to get access to content from other countries would be pretty neat on the days of no internet or just slow internet. That sense of comodity as changed in quite a big way.

I had a few weeks to kill when I was unemployed and finally had time to watch all of the channels I wanted and came to the disturbing conclusion that cable TV its not what they sell you.

I find that cable TV has three major issues that keep it from being better:

1- commercials

We might be spoiled nowadays, usually we pay to get rid of advertisement. With cable tv we are paying to watch content plagued with advertisement. And ads are not what they used to be. They used to try harder to charm and entertain while trying to sell you something. It's hard to find charming advertisement like before.

2- PPV channels

It might be fair to charge a lot for a lot of channels, but why do you have to pay extra for the channels that provide you awesome content that you wont have time to watch? Or you do have time to watch and have to neglect all of those channels that you were already paying a pretty penny?

3- Over saturated market

Not just in the sheer amount on channels you have access to, but on the channels you have access to. It's fine to telll you you hired 120 channels. A good chunk of it are just repeated channels with HD and UHD format with the same content at the same time.
In "ecency", they charge you a lot of money for so many channels that you don't have time to watch (even if you are a full time unemployed) or even want to watch. Forcing you to keep it to have a decent internet to check all the other content you do want to watch with on-demmand services like Netflix.

So I ask you, was it allays this bad? What good memories you keep from cable TV growing up?