Thanks for all the replies. I should have realized up front that it's usually not so much an issue of available space anymore, but rather dollars and cents.
When I look at my DirecTV channel lineup, I often ask myself how many of these channel do I actually watch? Mind you, I don't mean to pick on DirecTV; the same can surely be said of Dish Network and the various cable systems. That said, wouldn't it be great if satellite and cable providers offered customers a la carte programming? IOW, let me choose the channels I want to watch. Charge me based on the number and/or type and simply let the market decide.
Ah, but there's that old saying, attributed to George Carlin IIRC, that says the only choices we truly have are "paper or plastic?"