In recent times we’ve seen premium cable subscribers like HBO and Showtime offering stand-alone subscriptions, and this week saw the announcement of the PlayStation Vue TV subscription service allowing people to select individual channels for their cable package.

Yes, the long awaited and long overdue unbundling of TV has begun with people finally getting the ability to come up with their own personal a la carte lineup of TV channels. It’s something that over 80% of consumers have been wanting to do in surveys, with the average consumer seemingly happy to get rid of the useless ones they have no need for and settle with an ideal line-up of around seventeen channels on average.

To that effect, Digitalsmiths have conducted a new survey of over 3,000 people to find which channels would survive such a culling and which ones would likely getting the chop. The results show that the major free-to-air networks would survive, as would doco channels (Discovery, History, Nat Geo, Animal Planet) and big cablers like HBO, AMC, Comedy Central, FX, TNT, USA, Syfy, ABC Family, ESPN, Bravo and CNN.

Heading towards the middle of the bunch there’s Nickelodeon, MSNBC, E!, MTV, Fox News, Adult Swim, IFC and VH1. Down towards the bottom though, and likely to not fare well in the long run are the likes of Telemundo, Univision, HSN, QVC, BET, WETV, Fox Business, MLB, and Oprah’s various networks.

Source: Variety