Yeah. I have always found such arguments to be very self-serving to the cable providers. To get the 30 or so channels I want, I have to subscribe to a 535 channel plan, plus about 140 channels of music. It would seem totally plausible to charge, say, 2x the fractional cost per channel for a la carte service, and I pay another 50% premium on that for temporary access (day pass, say) if I want to watch a specific show on a channel available on the network, but not available today.

The problem as I have always seen it with the pay-per-view or pay-per-content model in cable/dbs or mobile is the cost per unit. $6-10 for a movie? Several dollars for a ringtone? Its never gonna happen because it doesn’t compare favorably with the costs of other media or my own time to hack a solution. Micropayments (sub $1 fees), with the difference made up for in the volume would seem a totally workable model, and one I have never seen anyone try.

I have, in my time working on user experience design for a large US operator, seen so many customers totally lost and frustrated with the monthly-recurring-charge system that I have to believe a fee for content structure (hey, like physical books and magazines are sold like already) makes sense.