If only we could demand a-la-carte pricing from the cable and satellite TV providers. No, I am not sure my bill would be hugely cheaper in the end - given what channels I would chose to have available to me - but at least I would not be paying any carriage fees for channels I don’t want and never watch.
By the way, a lot of the bundling happens above the level of the cable TV and satellite TV providers. MANY TV channels are not stand-alone companies on their own, but are merely one channel among many a much larger company owns. Those companies demands on the cable TV and satellite TV providers is such that in order to get the popular channels a media company owns, the cable TV provider has to take all or some portion of the other channels the media company owns.
For instance, CNN is merely one channel among many media assets owned by Warner Media (now a subsidiary of AT&T). I don’t think Warner Media lets any cable TV or Satellite TV provider deliver HBO or some of their other movie channels to their customers unless they also deliver CNN.
If we can’t legally consider all the ways that bundling is done in the cable TV industry as “restraint of trade” and truly anti-competitive (it removes many channels from needing to actually compete at all in order to be seen), then cutting the cord is the only option we have left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_WarnerMedia
HBO Now is only an HBO channel over the Internet:
https://www.hbo.com/order
You don’t pay a thing for CNN, and you don’t get CNN.