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Hmm...let's see. How will this work?

I'd guess less than 10% of cable customers will bother to pick a menu of channels they really want to see. The cable companies can still offer their Basic and Extended cable packages, just as they do now. Most customers will simply continue to use their cable as they do now...watching a few favorite channels and ignoring the rest.

10% will carefully select the channels they want to receive. For their trouble, they will get charged a premium price for each channel, bringing their total to just about the same as they're paying now. In fact, if the cable companies don't like the idea, they'll make it more expensive to have a la carte programming.

The alternative: Use your cable box's programming capabilities and block all the channels you don't want to watch, then you can surf through the ones you like.

Anyone who thinks there will be monetary savings to the a la carte idea is just silly. The cable companies will see to it that you pay as much or more. And they can do it if they like.

Me? I watch maybe six channels regularly, and a few more if there's something interesting on. It's no sweat to me that there are a bunch of channels available. I'm quite capable of choosing the programming I wish to watch.

The cable companies can still offer their Basic and Extended cable packages

If the ala carte happens, it will probably force consumers into digital, and that will allow cable providers to charge 'for the converter box'. Some cable basic/extended/expanded are still analog. (Mine is with 70 channels). To go ala carte, the cable co could only do that through digital service or with an old analog channel box. Digital is computer operated at the office, so selecting and deselecting is just a matter of entering channels on a computer screen. Analog channel selection would require filters and individually adjusted selection boxes -- and that could make the 'installation' fairly expensive.

For their trouble, they will get charged a premium price for each channel, bringing their total to just about the same as they're paying now. In fact, if the cable companies don't like the idea, they'll make it more expensive to have a la carte programming.

Pretty much, although it's not really the cable/satellite companies that don't like a la carte programming so much - it's really the networks themselves that don't like it, because they use the revenues from their big, popular channels to subsidize narrower, more specialized channels. A&E pays for the Biography channel and History International channel. The Discovery Channel pays for things like Discovery Health and the Military Channel.

Really, one of two things will happen - either those specialty channels will just evaporate and disappear for lack of interest (along with some of the stations that people here dislike for whatever reason), or the price of those "flagship" channels will be set high enough that you're effectively paying for niche channels anyway, whether you subscribe or not - it'll be a package in everything but name, only instead of having a channel you pay for but never watch, you'll have a channel that you pay for but can't watch.