I've been thinking about where all this leads (form an economics bent).
Let's say along with the big channels, $50/mon of my cable bill is for 100 channels, or 50 cents each. Maybe I watch five of them, and subsidize 95. But any of those channels also has viewers that are subsidizing my channels.
Now we move to ala carte. To make up for the subsidies, my channels would need to charge me a lot more. Assuming markets are rational [a theory I'll butcher in a moment], it should come to ABOUT $10/mon each. [I emphasize 'about' because I'm skipping a few details here that some will recognize, but I think for discussion's sake $10 is close enough].
Once consumers see that price, I think many will drop one or more channels (further driving prices up to make up for lost revenue). Yes, I'm saying that a consumer who is willing to pay $50/mon for five channels will not be willing to pay $50/mon for five channels.
So, say goodbye to the SciFi channel (and hundreds of others only viewed by a small percentage of viewers).
Who wins? Well, the big networks now have a lot less competition. Also I think people will turn to homemade video, internet content, social media, etc. Actually reading a book or talking to your family -- not so much. So we get rid of the decent but not great production quality channels (the middle class?) and replace it with more on the high end and more on the low end ("income" inequality?).
Or not.
As long as we are batting ideas about, I can see sports channel consolidation, or network channels offering a range (Fox with business, sports, news, adding an entertainment channel or two and selling that package). I can see the clusters of channels getting smaller, but will that mean more variety in clusters of channels, or will it mean every group will try to be 'the one' you subscribe to, with their smaller variety of related channels? That could put things like TBS, TNT, together with CNN and an 'old shows' network in one clump, NatGeo, Sci, Discovery in another cluster with their own news channel, or add in a weather channel on any of them (there are a few different ones, some just local).
I'm not sure some of the more special interest nets would go away, just get folded in and the whole package thing happen on a smaller scale. In fact, that's where I think things will likely go, and the bigger groups like OWN may have a variety of packages which support their lesser feeds to keep those alive and pad out the package.
While the channel packs may get smaller and even more specialized, I think they will try to give a cluster of channels with a little broader appeal in order to pull more people in and give the appearance of giving more for the price of that smaller package than just one channel for 7 or 10 bucks a month.
Face it, there are few channels out there that people are going to want to shell ten bucks a month for that aren't offering premium content, and even the movie channels go flat after a month or two because of repetition. It would not take long to watch all the 4+ star IMDB 5 or higher movies or shows on any one offering group, and you can only watch so much mediocre TV.
