What streaming could enable is more diverse niche channels. If you've got a second-or-third tier channel, you're not setting your own price. You're a "for 8 c

What streaming could enable is more diverse niche channels. If you've got a second-or-third tier channel, you're not setting your own price. You're a "for 8 cents more per subscriber, we'll also add this" sidebar in the ESPN contract negotiations. This probably puts you in poor control of your economic fate. If you go ad-supported, eventually the marketing sector will realize that individually-addressed, anayltics-slathered and highly categorized eyeballs on digital are worth more than the pig-in-a-poke eyeballs of advertising on traditional broadcast. It might require developing centralized inventory and selling systems, but it's coming. A good example of this is the anime market. It's funny to look at all the ads slipped into old products: "pester your cable company to carry (long defunct anime channel #229)" Crunchyroll can go direct to consumer and control its own pricing and accessibility, and it's at least treading water despite a market thart's undergone major deflation from its peak.