> Folks are already paying the amount that commercial-free TV would cost

Not even close. Take the entire amount of advertising $$ spent on TV ($100B+) and divide by the folks watching. That is the money that people would have to shell out one way or another.

Eh, do you have a citation for it being $100B or more a year? I can only find figures for about $60B:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-07/tech/30048336...

(The UK's is about $2.5B, despite it having around 20% of the US's population. Quite a stark difference.)

Another question is what percentage of that $60B actually funds TV content and how much is spent on producing ads and other advertising-specific overhead that would presumably vanish if we payed for completely ad-free TV.

Here's an article that describes a $77.5B TV advertising market in 2008:

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-google-c...

Here we see a 750MM subscriber base in the US:

http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/19/internet-and-telco-tv-eat-away...

So, that's what, ~$100 per subscriber...PER YEAR, to compensate for zero commercials? I hope my math is wrong!

I have a feeling I'm being terrifically dim, but how can there be a 750 million subscriber base in the US?

That is a good point!

Old numbers of ~160MM households as below, with 58% subscribing to basic cable[1], gives us ~93MM

77.5B / 93MM = $833/yr, or $70/mo.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_...

By my top-of-head calculations:

$100B advertising / ~160MM households = $625/household/year, or about $50/mo.

You're right, I wasn't even close. I was way over.

I said people watching. You chose to interpret that as households/year.

Good luck.

99% of households have a TV, and that number is probably from the 2000 census. What numbers do you think are more accurate?