They just do it because they have the market and you have no other choice besides satellites which if you do not have a line of sight for the dish it leaves you with only them as a choice.
I think they take away some of the good channels that people watch a lot and make them so that you have to upgrade to another package in order to get it.
If they had an option where you pay for basic then add channels on for a few bucks each a month I would not ***** but there is so much ******** on TV that I will never watch, other than HD I hardly go above channel 50 and who needs 10 Spanish channels, three religious channels and a shitload of MTV's where you can't even watch music videos just gay ass reality BS.