Point 1 - Why would the channel owners ever agree to that? look at Disney's most recent blackout because they wanted to make the local affiliates they own part of the cable bundle in those areas. For the channel owners it's vastly more profitable to force everyone to pay for every channel they offer than allow people to pick and choose.
Point 3 - The prices rise every year because the channel owners increase their prices every year and the cable companies pass it on.
I agree entirely that you're right about point 1, and what's more, the discount for removing channels would have been much smaller than people thought.
Instead of getting 100 channels for $100, maybe they would have paid $80 for 30 channels -
the cost per channel would have been a lot more with fewer people subscribing to them.
I still think people imagined that if they paid $100 for 100 channels they could pay $20 for 20 channels, and that was never going to happen.
