Streaming services are the worst. I shouldn't have to subscribe to a half dozen different services. Someone should sell a bundle that gives me access to all of them for a lower price.
But a la carte hasn't taken off in streaming services, so now we're recreating channels. Next will be bundles where you can get Netflix and Hulu and Amazon together. Blah.
Their price is a reflection of how much people want it. ESPN (and sports as a whole) are a big driver of cable subscriptions, which helps all cable channels.
Here's a NYTimes article from 2012 titled "The 'Mad Men' Economic Miracle". http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo...
AMC was making $30 million per MONTH off 80 million subscribers despite Breaking Bad having less than 3 million viewers.
Instead we have all those channels in a perpetual race to the bottom to attract just enough eyeballs to be worth "keeping on the payroll" of the bundle.
The racing footage I used to be able to get on Speedvision (on the rare occasion where my local provider HAD Speedvision!) was worth far more to me than the $0.20 they got from my subscription.
I for one, welcome our a-la-carte overlords, where my dollars go to the content I want.
(Say there's $30 on average of revenue in the cable bundle with only $15 of it being desired spending on average. The channels get a lot more revenue with the opaque bundles, and they are still competing to some extent for the revenue.)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/26/cable_unbundl...
Now how is that any different from cable?