People don't go for one channel as a premium. You've got the majority of subscribers on dish, directv, and fios wanting hundreds of channels, you aren't gonna get the main group to subscribe to one little channel.
For a new service like AT&t uverse, which only has 40 total hd channels, you probably could, but good luck convincing comsumers expecting alot of channels to subscribe to 1.
Now the price increase, is a good alternative...