[Melas]

You're not understanding though. Ala carte is going to be more expensive on many levels. It's going to be require databases with more, and more extensive fields per subscriber in the computer systems, which will mandate more storage space which is a re$ource that the consumer will pay for. It's going to take longer to process subscriptions and changes to subscriptions by human operators, which is a human re$ource that will have to be paid for by the consumer. It's going to be more labor and machien intensive on the accounting side of the business, which again is going to be paid for by the consumer.

That's just from the provider end. That doesn't even account for the myriad reasons why moving to ala carte might cause the originators to raise their rates to the providers, which will be passed on to you.

Anyone with an iota of business sense should be able to plainly see that the teir system is more efficient and cheaper to the consumer.

[Racehorse]

You're not understanding though. Ala carte is going to be more expensive on many levels.

Your concerns surprise me.

The only concern I take rather seriously, though I note the validity of all your objections, is the length and complexity of the form required to order ala carte cable service.

Other than that, the data base field is simply ones and zeros, switch on, switch off.  Having had some years of experience working with military databases, I have no doubt our cable industry will have little problem adapting technology in service to consumer choice.

As for the myriad reasons you fear the cable provider might find to raise prices, I ask a simple question, "what's new about that?"  Cable and telephone companies have made an art of dividing and subdividing every conceivable task and then finding a reason to charge a fee for doing something they had to do anyway.