I'm saying the specific shows I mentioned would not exist.

With Mad Men- perhaps that's true- but BB did just fine in the ratings. If MM had never been made- so what? Other shows would have existed- perhaps even better ones.

• Personally- I thought Mad Men was garbage and could not understand why people watched it. If that was causing my cable bill to be higher- then it would have been a definite win for me if it couldn't have been aired.

Original content is a big risk.

Of course it's a big risk- there's also a big reward if you're successful. That's called life.

There need to be strong incentives in place for a company to risk it. Cable bundling was one of the strongest incentives to get basic cable into producing original content. Without cable bundling, who knows what will happen?

That's not what's happened with bundling and you know that. Content producers use bundling to cause cable companies to carry even more garbage channels if they want to be able to carry the stuff people want. There's a reason I had Fox, FX, FXX, FXXX (or whatever the fuck they're up to at this point) and so on. These companies don't have to produce quality content- they just produce crap, throw it at the wall, and see what sticks- and we get to pay for it (well- you get to pay for it- I cut the cord last year and couldn't be happier).

I doubt that the "cost of purchasing content was going to undermine their profitability," though. It's much cheaper to buy streaming rights to known hits like The Office and The Walking Dead than it is make new seasons of Arrested Development and Orange Is the New Black. I'm less confident of my assertions about Netflix, though.

Then you need to do some more reading. Cost of content is the biggest threat to Netflix. Why would they bother to make any of their own content if it's so much cheaper to buy the streaming rights to existing programs?