Horace Dediu, on the cost of television:
[O]ver a period of about 40 years, watching TV went from free to quite expensive. More expensive even than a family’s communications costs (i.e. telephone service.) That’s quite an achievement at a time when technology diffusions caused huge price reductions in other goods and services. Consider that the TV set used to watch the programming improved dramatically while decreasing in price over the same period.
But we’re now in the era of cord-cutters, and the future doesn’t look so bright for cable.