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The legal requirements for affordable television has always been touted as necessary to keep the public informed not entertained. It would be interesting to know how many of the 60 million now have access to alternative means of receiving public notices. That may bolster the cable companies position in this.
The system was never intended to be a cost-sink for the cable companies. The cable franchise was supposed to be so lucrative that the costs of providing affordable local broadcast-only cable service would be lost in the margins. Part of the problem with how this has all played out is that competitors have been eating away at the more lucrative aspects of the cable franchise yet the regulators that set the system up didn't uniformly apply the provisions for affordable local broadcast-only cable service onto the competitors.
What should have happened is either the competitors offering service in a franchise area should never have been exempt from the requirements (even though, for decades, it was technically infeasible for some of them to comply - you don't undercut the integrity of a system just because it is impossible to not do so) or as soon as the value of competition was deemed higher than the integrity of the system to assure affordable local broadcast-only cable service as it was originally constructed, the system should have been recast as an across-the-board tax on residents channeled through the franchise authority to the franchisee. Measures that are for the public good should be paid for by the public so there is accountability for the cost and benefit, rather than blithely saddled on industry without a second thought when the justification for the mandate erodes due to changing environments.
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