costs will probably rise though as they squeeze competitors out

The only potential benefit will be that increased prices continue to drive people to cut the cable and accelerate the push to move more and better content to services like Netflix and Hulu, and further that content providers (AMC [The Walking Dead], for example, or ESPN) will start selling subscriptions to users without the need of a cable provider.

For a reasonable subscription fee to AMC, I will subscribe to their network to watch TWD instead of fetching it off a torrent. But I'll never again pay $80/month for a useless cable subscription that provides 95% crap I will never watch.

One less telephone number to call to complain about problems.

Lots of benefits for shareholders though

I would love a la carte programming. I only watch three or four channels anyway, so if I could get BBC or AMC on my Roku or Chromecast I'd be ecstatic.

Ala cart on cable is unaffordable. The bundled deals cable companies get male cable (and direct tv) affordable to us (if $80 per month is affordable).

Make cable, not male...

If Comcast provides better customer service than--

yeah never mind

To be able to bundle the channels you want and get rid of the rest would be ideal.2WL is correct

If customers got to only watch the channels they wanted, then the other channels would go away for lack of viewers. Bundles force customers to pay for them.

If the other channels went away, then the viewers pf those other channels would go away leaving the remaining viewers of the "popular channels" with a large bill and a smaller populace to pay for it.

As far as bundling the channels you want, it doesn't work that way. NBC says "these are the channels we will provide you with, Time Warner, and it will cost you X per year to provide them to your customers." Time Warner says "But we only want these three" and NBC says "OK, then the cost is X minus $1) and Time Warner loses 5% of their viewing audience.

I understand how and why it works ,I was just dreaming aloud