Chris

Fair point as far as it goes, I agree that the days of low-value channels leaching subs off larger, more successful ones via bundling are limited. I'd go so far as to say that the practice has only survived for as long as it has because Sky has been very keen to lock as much telly as possible behind its paywall, and because there has historically been a shortage of spot-beam capacity for free-to-air sat broadcast to the UK, which causes rights issues for some content.

But I think you may be underestimating the number of broadcast linear channels that *aren't* pay-tv. A brief look at the Freeview or Freesat EPG will give you an idea.