The average consumer won't save any money because the price of these channels already reflects average viewership. Those who watch a bunch of different channels would pay a lot more. Only those who watch a very small amount of channels would actually save money.

But paying for access to a channel doesn't really make sense anymore. Why should anyone care what channel content is broadcast on?

Why should someone watching a few hours on two channels pay twice as much compared someone one watched one channel all the time? The later is consuming much more content. Paying by channel is just a shitty way of gauging usage.

A la carte will reduce the amount of content without really reducing prices. Every station will essentially be like TNT or TBS.

Netflix shows that people want the opposite of a la carte. They want an unlimited plan.

It's probably a moot point, video on demand is going to kill cable no matter what.