Okay so on the whole idea of "what popular streamers do" and him denying doing something he thinks a popular streamer does, let's get a bit weird and talk about Gawr Gura.
While I know there's very little overlap between people who follow this cretin and people who watch vtubers, but there is some and it serves as a good comparison. For people who don't know who the fuck Gura is, She's a vtuber under hololive, and gained 2 million subs in like 4 months or something. Her growth was ridiculous. Most of their streamers, like her, only do maybe an hour or two of streaming every few days and then the rest of the time they're doing BTS stuff that involves talks with management, planning projects, performance practices (since they all have to sing and dance) and in general, manage their own platform with the help of their agency...you know, actual full time content creation work.
Even so, an image like the one I posted takes time to make, and she more than likely made it herself in under an hour but she had it prepared just in case there was a tech issue during some streams. Instead of hemming and hawing for 20 minutes about whether or not to reset the router, she sets about fixing the problem immediately. She also will leave up a BRB screen for longer breaks and just get up for shorter breaks...not that anyone who does professional streaming for a living takes a 25 minute break unless there's a good reason for it and doesn't have a BRB screen at the ready (fuck, I have one.) Phil just uses the same shitty slideshow as his prestream stuff and has no unique assets to speak of.
Oh, and she also serves as a good example of what a "fun, interactive" stream should be like. I don't even like her content but watching her for 5 seconds shows that she's able to keep up with a live chat numbering in the THOUSANDS. Phil barely pays attention to his audience of "two hundred" and the audience knows he doesn't give a shit about them, so they talk amongst themselves.
In regards to the subscription content that someone like Gura puts out, it's usually free talks (so Phil would have to get rid of his "prestream podcasts" and paywall them) or sometimes karaoke performances or movie watchalongs, but apparently sitting on your ass and watching a movie is even too much for Phil to do. I have to wonder how the fuck that's even possible.
