Personally, I'm not a TV watcher. I don't care what they charge. As an outside observer it seems like everyone is gauging everyone down stream. The content owners are gauging the distribution network which passes these costs through to their customers after tacking on their margin. The sports franchises are a large component of this. Sports is a big draw for the cable companies, but an outsized component of their media costs. The cable companies are spreading the cost of sports to all of their users. Now that the cable companies are becoming the content providers, they can gauge other cable companies.

Of course, as I install things I see a sample of the content. It seems to me that, in addition to the increasing raw distribution and premium content fees, the density of commercials is rising and there is an increasing level of "targeting".