The Times did not escape the newspaper business. It used puzzles, recipes, sports and shopping advice to make its journalism a more frequent habit - and its subscription harder to cancel.
Philo keeps live television cheap by leaving sports and local stations off the shopping list. That constraint has become its product strategy - and the reason more than a million entertainment-first households make room for it.
The internet made coupons abundant and saving money strangely complicated. Two former college roommates built a media company around doing the tedious part for everyone else - then turned trust at the checkout lane into a business brands want to buy into.