One issue is that cable often really screws up badly with temporary channels that are supposed to pop up for conflict games. One of my RSN+ channels simply disappeared for hockey/basketball one season and no one at the cable company could even understand what I was talking about, let alone explain why the overflow games weren't on their system anymore, or even put in a ticket to get it back. I even wound up talking to a regional manager who didn't understand. Thankfully, that is one problem that Dish doesn't have.
I do agree with you that, cable company antics aside, it might be in the customer's interests to cut down to 1-2 RSNs per region and put all the sports teams on there with an overflow channel for conflicts and lower the bill (But would they lower the bill? I have my doubts. Seems like prices only rise regardless of costs to the providers.). I know it's a little odd that my region has one RSN with the two baseball teams and one RSN with the basketball team and the hockey team- meaning the baseball RSN has nothing to really show in the winter and the basketball/hockey RSN has nothing to really show in the summer. I mean, they try to put random low-level stuff (Like small conference college bball on the baseball channel) on in their off-seasons, but there don't really *need* to be two. But there are two.
I don't see what we as customers can do to change it. I'm not joining some boycott to merge RSNs and neither are most people. It wouldn't work because people wouldn't do it. And, besides, there are at least some marginal things on in each RSN's "off-season" that I find myself watching very occasionally. Beats Lifetime- and there are at least two or three Lifetime type channels on Dish, Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Oxygen, the Oprah network- okay, that's four I can name off the top of my head, and I don't even watch them, there might be more. Doesn't seem fair to single sports out on this- a lot of different channels seem to not have enough programming to sustain a separate channel and seem like they could be merged, not just sports RSNs.