If a network has shows that look appealing to you, subscribe for a couple months. If there's only one show that looks appealing, buy it on iTunes.
We're never going to have an affordable, legal, pay-once-for-everything model.
Why does it work for music, though?
We would be having a different conversation if I could have a thumbdrive w enough storage capacity to hold the entire Disney catalog for $35.
This makes even more sense if my ISP charges per GB. Why should I pay for duplicate transfer of data?
That possibility is a huge market failure. The demand is there.
Media companies could stop over pricing their content
For the same total amount of content produced, they could give everyone access to all of it for the same total revenue they receive now and the only thing that would change is that everyone would have access to all of it.
You don't make more money by having only 20% of the customers even if it means you don't have to share the revenue with four other studios. You make less, because having access to some of the content isn't worth as much as having access to all of the content, so the industry as a whole is providing less value and consequently doing less business.