To be fair to the cable companies, a lot of the complaints in this thread should be directed at the networks which are now extorting money from the cable companies. If you go back to the early days of the cable TV industry, channels would often pay a cable company to carry them. If they're not being seen they can't sell advertising and advertising dollars kept channels afloat. To get on as many cable systems as possible, channels would often pay the cable systems to put them on their system and hope to make up the money through commercial sales.
Cable companies were raking in the dough back in those days as there were limited channel slots available and lots of new up and coming channels that wanted to be on the air. Over the last twenty years or so, that situation has evolved. I don't believe any cable channel now pays for system placement and nearly all now charge to let their programming be aired by the cable companies. Even local, over the air channels now charge to have their programming available through cable. That's largely why our cable bills have gone from $20-$40 up to the current prices of $100 or more.
I believe ESPN (maybe MTV?) was the first of the cable companies to go from offering their service for free, or paying to be aired, to charging cable companies to air their service. Once the first cable network figured out they could get paid by the cable companies, the word spread and soon every cable channel wanted to be paid for letting their programming air.
Cable TV providers had little choice but to yield to the demands of the networks involved. A cable system with no programming isn't going to survive. Networks, large and small, and even local channels now all get paid to have their programming air on cable systems. That revenue stream now is more important to them than the advertising dollars they used to rely on. When their current contract with a cable company expires,they want more than they got on the old contract and with the way cable channels have merged through the years, if the cable system doesn't agree they could lose five or ten channels from their lineup and likely lose customers to a competitor, so the cable system has little choice but to yield to their demands.
Here's a chart showing the cost of just twelve cable channels. https://consumerist.com/2014/08/05/espn-accounts-for-more-than-6-of-your-cable-bill-could-soon-top-8... Now, most cable system carry far more than twelve channels. When you start adding up all of those numbers you come up with the reason why our cable bills have risen so much.
And the networks aren't stupid. They know if they tell their viewers to call the cable/satellite company to demand they keep the channel that the call centers for those systems will get flooded with calls that will cost the cable/satellite company more money to increase staffing to field all of those angry calls from the consumer who wants their MTV, FX, or which ever channel is holding the gun to the head of the cable company this week.
Setting up and running a cable TV system is not cheap, but the profit for the companies come over the long term. Now the content providers, no longer satisfied with advertising revenue are getting paid by the cable companies and cutting into those profits and the only way the cable companies can stay viable is by passing those price increases on to the consumer.
I'm convinced we'll eventually migrate to a system where the consumer subscribes directly to the networks and live streams whatever they want from that network. CBS with their All Access is testing that theory out. I suspect that over the next few years, many more networks, if not all of them, will follow suit. At that point consumers will be able to buy just the channels they truly watch and if those channels wish to increase their prices, they'll have to bear the brunt of the consumer's anger instead of the cable companies.
In this case the anger people in this thread have should truly be directed at the networks more than the cable systems. It's the networks with their ever increasing demands for more and more money from the cable systems that's raising the costs of our cable bills and forcing cable companies to decide whether to carry the network at all. Most consumers are unaware of how the system has changed over the last few decades and point the finger of blame at the guy who's billing them when in fact they're often not to blame.
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