Great article in the Times about 10 days ago (this got bumped a few times by various audio-related news) and the best layman’s explanation of how cable works, and how unbundling would be bad for most.
For example, if you never watch sports, you might be better off not having to pay for ESPN, which charges the highest carriage fee of any basic cable channel. But Mr. Byzalov estimates that sports channel carriage fees would more than triple under unbundling, as most subscribers opt out and only die-hard sports fans buy in. Consumers who don’t care about sports at all would be better off, but casual sports fans would be worse off: They wouldn’t find it worth paying $37 for an unbundled cluster of sports channels, even if they would have paid the roughly $9 that it costs to get those channels as part of a bundled package.
via Why Unbundling Cable Would Not Save You Money – NYTimes.com.