Hypothetically speaking about TV "Cord Cutting"!

There's a lot of discussion going on about "Cord Cutting". Essentially this refers to dropping cable TV and keeping your over the air broadcasts while supplementing your viewing with legal content Internet streaming options, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and major networks. Let's think about this logically for a minute. For the sake of argument, lets say everyone dumped their cable/satellite service tomorrow. Doesn't that mean that all the shows and movies that air on cable now would cease to exist due to the lack of money to produce shows like "Game of Thrones", "Walking Dead", "Mythbusters" and, heaven help us, "Duck Dynasty" or any hundreds of other popular shows that can rival the broadcast networks viewing figures enough to become commercially viable? The only reason "Arrested Development" and "House Of Cards" exist now is because HBO programs paved the way for them. Face it, Netflix only has two original series. Right now, the Internet is not going to suffice as a replacement for cable because collectively, across the U.S., we don't have enough bandwidth available to us to generate the viewing figures it would take to make these shows financially viable. Even if it could, they would just charge more for bandwidth. So there goes your bargain Internet. If Cable was gone tomorrow, then Netflix would suddenly see a massive drop in available programming. So there goes Netflix, Amazon Prime...etc. They only exist now because there is a plethora of programming to offer. If that well dries up, so do they. The only reason Internet is as cheap as it is is because the majority of American citizens do not use it as their television choice preference. What about ESPN & other live sports programming networks, MLB Network, NFL Network, etc. Yeah, they can stream, and do. MLBTV is one of the best/cheapest sports products out there but MLB & the other sports have too much money invested to limit their output to that. They need ESPN, CBS, NBC & Fox. You won't break all the players unions and AFTRA/SAG just to cut the cord. All that would be accomplished is that we would go back to broadcast TV only along with a bit of fringe Internet content (You Tube) because the shows you want now for individual consumption would go away because there would be no cable/satellite money to fund them. There is also the call for "Al A Carte cable". I had Al A Carte cable on the "Big Ugly Dish" in the early '90's and believe me, to subscribe to only the channels you want and give up the rest, will cost you more than your bundled cable package, with all the crap you will never watch. That cable bundle keeps all the fringe channels operating so that they can keep experimenting with shows you may want to watch and occasionally hit pay dirt with shows like  "Walking Dead", "Gold Rush", "Breaking Bad", "Psych", "Mad Men" & "Doctor Who". Yes 'Doctor Who' is a big hit in the UK but PBS was offered the new series & very few stations picked it up before SYFY picked it up a year late in 2006. PBS barely did anything with the classic series when it was popular and a major network would never touch it. Hello torrents, but probably not much interest, if you even remembered the 'cult show'. BBC America (not SYFY) gets the biggest kudos for launching this show in it's fourth season in the US, without them it would not be a hit here. My whole point here is that if cable is not bundled then you lose the massive number of crappy networks that will take a chance on the shows you now want to only watch on Netflix, on demand. Netflix is a fine service but it's just an on demand re-run service like Amazon Prime. Not bad, useful, a nice supplement, but not a major/minor network replacement. Netflix only has two 'original' shows and wouldn't have them if cable experimentation & cash hadn't paved the way. Chris Foxx The Devil's Advocate