The point is that the cable company does nothing other than provide you programming. They are not responsible for the content, they are only a gateway. Do you complain to your ISP when Yahoo shows you ads?

The reason that people got cable initially were twofold. One, to get the channels that were not available over the airwaves. I'm not sure that VHF and UHF have enough bandwidth to support that many channels to begin with (probably so, since cable started out as just an antenna replacement), but those channels certainly couldn't have paid to have transmitters in every market. On the other hand, those channels were available over the airwaves, as long as you purchased an old-school satellite dish. (IIRC, you had one of these until recently.) The second reason was to get local channels without having to have a big-ass antenna on your roof, and probably get a better signal even if you did. I know that when I was little, before we had cable, even though we were in the city, TV reception could be spotty.

So the cable companies were not providing that content, only your access to it. Of course, I think that cable companies began failing miserably at that goal, and that's why I refuse to pay them money anymore.