MuchMusic has morphed into MuchComedy because the TV industry is at a crossroads
With a limited budget, we're all going to be more selective about what we watch and pay for. That's why free access is so addictive. If you hate the free content, you only wasted your time (perhaps more valuable than money), but if you also paid for that content, you just got suckered, twice!
If your favourite channels cut back on fresh content, move it elsewhere, and then expect you to keep paying the same price (or a bit more) for those channels and also expect you to subscribe to other channels that are not part of your current package, just to see 5 shows that you can stream for free online (perhaps even from the official channel websites), well my friends, that's not being very realistic.
Rebranding channels seems to be one of the preferred ways for the Cable/Satellite world to keep up with the changing times, but if rebranding starts to create more cord-shavers and cord-cutters, a better tactic will have to be implemented.
A&E has had the same reality-style format for many years now, so a rebrand is not the reason that some people might have recently dumped it from their package.
Paying $5/month for a theme pack containing A&E and a few channels that I'm not interested in, doesn't sound like a terrible deal, but $5 here, another $2.99 there, etc, begins to add up very quickly to a number that my bank account wouldn't tolerate for very long. And I also don't like the idea of supporting other channels in a package, if I never watch them (I'd rather that they go bankrupt and get replaced by newer channels).
Still, I don't really think that a la carte pricing is the answer to our viewing problems (especially since most channels now have unrelated content from here, there and everywhere).
What we really need is for the various cable/satellite companies to come together and stop this constant bickering about carriage and pricing, and instead work even harder at making the Canadian television industry a friendlier, more organized environment for people to be a part of.
We all want more bang for our buck, and since our time and money is already limited, it's often necessary to head to the Internet and sample a bunch of freebies, before even thinking about paying for something that we might not like, or already know that we can't afford.
The way things are set up now, in the broadcast TV world, I often feel like a trapped guinea pig, in a never-ending maze of incompetence.
The Internet is also a maze, but since I find it much easier to find satisfying rewards with minimal effort or cost, it's a maze that I don't want to escape from ... at least not until I'm being hunted by the authorities for failing to abide by their terms of fair usage.
Life isn't fair ... that's why the Internet works as well as it does.