A la carte television is a sucker bet

Today Gizmodo did a post about the future of video content. For at last 15 years now I have been reading about people wanting a la carte pricing.  There is a la carte pricing in television right now.  The problem is it is per show and not per channel.  You can pay $30 to $40 a single show if you want to buy it.  If content companies can get that price point now, what will they get for a whole channel a la carte.

Here is a quote about pricing.

We can start with how much your cable provider pays for access to certain channels. Those numbers aren't widely accessible, but we do know that ESPN—the big dog of pay-TV—costs your cable provider at least $4.69 per subscriber per month. How can one station command such a fee? Because cable channel pricing, like everything else, is based on supply and demand, and ESPN's ratings are nearly twice that of the number two pay cable network.

Here is the kicker.

It's not unreasonable to think that ESPN alone would cost upwards of $20 per month as a standalone product. And that's probably a conservative estimate

At this rate the five or six channels you watch will cost you what 200-300 channels cost you now.  It is just the reality of pricing.