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The History channel seems never to be about history any more.

This reminds me of a bit by a comedian whose show my wife and I went to a couple years ago:

"TV sucks now. There ain't no history on the history channel, no learning on the TLC channel, no music on the MTV channel, and no gambling on the BET channel."

those shopping channels ride for free, don't cost you or the satellite provider a thing

Be that as it may, I still don't want them cluttering up my channel guide. 

Even blocking 100 home shopping channels, a dozen religious channels, and a half a dozen "cable news" channels, I still have hundreds of channels with nothing on. 

But there sure are a lot of live sports. 

Corporations that are "for profit" don't put profits second, ever, they may at times like to appear to do that for PR purposes.

Profit is their reason for being.  I presume they get a slice of the pie from those shopping channels, probably not much, but then it takes little to add them.

I'd guess IF we could pick and choose our specific package, it might end up costing us more than being given 500 channels, 450 of which are garbage.

Every new car sold today has power windows.  Why?  Because it is cheaper to do that than manage two parts streams to provide something cheaper that has rollups.  Offering manual windows would cost more.

It's truly bizarre that our TV packages are basically earmarked bills.  NONE of the customers want it, but it's been the norm for years now. 
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I guess it's another case of the corporation putting profits second, right?

Whatever gave you the impression that profits were not the number one thing for corporations or that they shouldn't be? Do you know anyone that goes into business not caring if they make money? If so, it is a short lived business.

A "good business model" emphasizes profits of course but not at the expense of long term growth.  Some newer tech companies take this to an extreme for obvious reasons and is why they may not pay INCOME taxes, because they reinvest profits, and thus have no taxable INCOME.  THis gets thrown around in the tax "discussion" about paying their fair share, but reality is, you pay taxes on taxable INCOME.  A newer company that reinvests everything won't have any often as not.

Companies like GE not only had loss carry forwards but also tax credits for making wind turbines, given by the same politicians who complain they didn't pay taxes.

Even a more established company SHOULD focus on longer term growth over quarterly profits, but investors of course tend to microexamine the latter.  Long term growth is "boring".

Oh yeah, there are at least a dozen Spanish/foreign channels, black channels, lgbt channels, ect. 

You have to block out like half of this $%$@. Just unwatchable, unless you belong to the thin demographic that they are aiming for. 

It's truly bizarre that our TV packages are basically earmarked bills.  NONE of the customers want it, but it's been the norm for years now. 
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I guess it's another case of the corporation putting profits second, right?

Well, you understand that things like shopping channels actually reduce the cost of cable/satellite TV service, right? 

The carriers aren't paying HSN and the like for that content. Those shopping channels are paying the carriers to be included in the channel lineup. 

Those revenues offset the cost to them of acquiring more popular programming content.