[tacostakohashi]

Why can't you just buy the cable channels you want, instead of a bundle? Because they want to be able to show a certain number of subscribers to their advertisers, and selling subscriptions / bundles gives them that number.

A magazine contains ads between the articles, and that's where most of the revenue comes from. If you just bought one article, where would the ads go?

Selling a subscription gives some stability and ability to forecast revenues, and hire the right number of writers, sign leases, pay pensions, etc. Selling articles individually would lead to wildly varying and unpredictable income, and lead to the worst imaginable kinds of clickbait.