You've always needed all of the movie channel packages to get all of the movies. Each premium network has an agreement with certain studios, HBO, Showtime, Starz and Epix have the majority of first run rights for movies from the big studios and production companies. That's how the movie channels worked forever. For movies, Cinemax has been nothing but an HBO overrun channel for years.
You can call it a BS argument all you want, but the alternative would have been to raise the price of TV Gold $16/month to cover the cost of Cinemax and Epix. The price stayed the same, while channels were removed. Are those channels worth $16 to you? Not sure how comparing cable to satellite is comparing apples to oranges, since Charter, Dish and DirecTV are all direct competitors with each other. Can't get more apples to apples then that. TV Silver has been $85 and TV Gold has been $105 since at least 2015 and that is what they cost today. The broadcast TV fee has increased a few dollars, the set top box rental fee went from $5 to $7 to $7.50 each, but the core package price has stayed the same, that is my point. A subscription to Gold with 1 cable box will cost about $130 after it's all said and done, not much more then it cost in 2015. Again, compare the cost of the top tier packages from other providers.
Since I switched over to Spectrum Pricing three years ago in March of 2016, my bill increased $11/month due to increases in the broadcast fee and receiver fees, that's an average of $3.66/month per year. Far below other MSOs.
And its a very good thing that you can't connect coax to the back of a TV anymore. All of those poor quality analog channels were a gigantic waste of bandwidth. It's thanks to analog removal that Charter can offer basic internet at 100 or 200 Mbps, increase Ultra from 100 Mbps to 400 Mbps and launch the Gigabit tier. Analog should have been removed 10+ years ago, I love my gigabit internet and if that means people can't connect coax to the back of a TV anymore, so be it. Don't care.