Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, it's a classic capitalism vs. communism argument. Economically: Many channels will die, which would lower production costs, which in a competitive market lowers consumer costs. More importantly, channels will actually need to fight for consumers. Which means they are not going to soft ball ultra cheap reality TV that most of their core demographic hate. cough syfy
Huh? If you don't like reality TV then you aren't syfy's core demographic (or just about any channel's, really). Basically every channel has moved in that direction because people keep proving they will watch it .
PS: Cheap TV can be compelling. Personally I really liked the primitive technology youtube channel which has 788,764 subscribers and is really cheap to produce 1 guy without any spoken lines. Twitch can also be extremely compelling. However, that's not paying subscribers.