I am betting you didn't mean it this way, but that is quite a slight to the thousands of Spanish speaking people who probably are grateful for that programming.
Second, in my opinion you are comparing apples to the best apples. There is a huge difference between HBO and the others. They have multiple, yearly, award winning series and shows. And it covers everything from comedy to sports, to documentaries. There are many that feel HBO is the best cable enterprise of all. Showtime tries, has had a few good original programs, but pales in comparison to HBO.
Let me address this in a few points:
1.) You are right that I didn't mean it as a slight toward Spanish speaking viewers; however, how about the slight HBO is making toward English speaking viewers by charging them a few cents to a few bucks for the 7th channel (HBO Latino) that they aren't even using. HBO Latino is usually HBO with the SAP button, there are some small changes to the line-up. I came up with options in my OP that I thought was fair. One being that HBO charges for it's 6 English channels and makes HBO Latino A La Carte for the Spanish speaking viewers. That still leaves HBO with 6 channels at 16 bucks and Cinemax (which has the same movies) at 8 (4 on Dish) for 13 bucks.
2.) I was an HBO sub back in my Comcast days for years. I agree with you over the series on HBO. Luckly, I was switching to Dish and dropping HBO when the Sopranos was ending. However, I'm looking at the amount of options. Take Showtime, as you mentioned (I never subbed to Showtime): On most providers you get 6 or 7 Showtime channels, 2 channels from The Movie Channel, Flix, and Sundance. Take Cinemax: On most providers 8 channels. Take Starz: On most providers 6 channels and Encore. All cost less, only west coast repeats, which I didn't include.
English speaking subs are in my opinion geting ripped off for HBO Latino. Quite frankly I couldn't care less if any Spanish speaking Americans don't like my comment. The Politically Correct America of today automatically deems that asking Latinos to learn English is a slight to them. If that's so, where's HBO L'Italiano, HBO French, HBO Japanese, better yet HBO in American Sign Language (I know about closed caption, but isn't HBO Latino just HBO with the SAP button), and so on. It's all or none, in my opinion. It's not a slight to Spanish speaking people to ask them to learn the language of the country that they just moved to, a language that isn't offical, but all offical documents and legal rulings, and the economy was built on. It's actually a slight to demand those who have become acustomed to the prefered language of the country to be told to change for a group that just arrived. We didn't go them, they came to us. And I welcome them into this melting pot, but if you want to come to my backyard, you need to play by my rules. I close off the following again, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Cambodians, French, Russians, Japanese, Isrealies, Palestinians, Koreans, and so on have all come to this country, brought their cultures to our melting pot and made America better, but they all (including my immigrant grandparents from Italy) have all learned English. What makes Spanish speaking Americans so special?
Sorry bluegrass, because your this list of your's has been shot to hell by my rants and others' replies.