Your high cable bill, explained

[Commentary] "Why is my cable bill so high?" is a question you've likely asked yourself at one time or another. The most common misconception about how cable bundling works is that the massive amount of money you pay is for a huge number of channels, many of which you never watch. You are, indeed, getting all of those channels, and if ratings are any indication, you're ignoring a lot of them. But you're probably not paying for the ones you're ignoring. Instead, what you're paying for is a handful of big-ticket channels -- your ESPNs and FXs and USAs and TNTs and AMCs. The majority of your cable bill is taken up by these top-flight channels.

So the problem is less one of how many channels you have than how many channels you have with content you actually care about. If you're only a sports fan and only care about ESPN, having to pay for a bunch of other channels you don't watch must seem like a poor deal. But if you like to watch, say, American Horror Story, Monday Night Football, The Walking Dead, and Mr. Robot -- all from not just different networks, but different corporations entirely -- you start to see how the numbers add up.