Your Unfair Cable Bill: Most Expensive Channels Aren't the Most Watched

Don't watch much ESPN? You still have to pay for it. Love “The Walking Dead,” but hate “SportsCenter”? Too bad. Cable providers pay only a fraction as much for AMC -- the network that airs TV's top-rated drama -- as they do for ESPN.

And they pass their fees on to you, the consumer. The average cable bill in the United States has increased about 4.5 percent annually over the past 15 years to more than $90 today, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

One major reason is the increase in the prices networks charge cable providers to carry their programming -- known in the industry as carriage fees. But those fees don't always correlate to networks’ popularity. ESPN charges the most per subscriber by far -- $5.54 -- taking up on average about 6 percent of basic cable bills, according to numbers SNL Kagan compiled exclusively for TheWrap.