although I will turn them off for a sports broadcast.

Waaaaay too many TV shows and movies will have characters talking in a whisper in one scene immediately followed by booming sound effects. Drives me bananas.

I think I discovered the subtitles trick back with GoT. The plots were so complicated, it was helpful to me just to see a character's name spelled out as it was spoken, which helped me to associate the names with the faces and follow what was going on better.

I don't think my hearing is going bad per se, but I do miss a word every now and then in TV dialogue and find it darned helpful to be able to catch it in the closed captions.

Plus, sometimes the closed captions are downright hilarious when they don't quite match what was said.