Why should we waste any of our time doing that when they could just charge for minutes watched, like the gas/electric company. They're already tracking that data.
Unless you are in the business of making and selling media, I don’t see how you could claim that. The cost structures of utilities as well as demand curves seem like they would so different that the comparison is nonsensical.
Instead of telling other people how to run their business, perhaps people should be putting their money where their mouth is and create the media and try selling it by the minute, and see how successful they are.
That depends on how much you watch. It would at least incentivize them to produce content worth your time. On the other hand, it could lead to a lot of content being stretched out and padded to increase minutes spent...