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My guess: Within 5-7 years most cable companies will be operating under "cafeteria plans," where each subscribers simply ticks off which channels he wants and which ones he doesn't. Don't like Bravo or CNN? Your cable box will block those channels and you won't pay for them. (And NBC and AOL won't get your money.)

Maybe the tiers will go by owner (although some networks would just as soon have it that you didn't know they were connected...). E.G. Viacom block (MTV, VH1, M2, VH1Classics, Nick, TV Land, Spike/TNN...), FOX Block (Fox Sports, Fox News, FX...), NBC Block (MSNBC, Bravo...), Time/Warner Block (CNN, TCM, ...), Time/Warner Premium Block (HBO1, HBO2, HBO Family, HBO..., Cinema, Mo' Max...).

You'd probably still get all broadcast channels ("basic cable") Meaning that Viacom's CBS, Disney's ABC, Fox, and Time-Warner's WB-UPN would all be exempt from "opt out" provisions. I think that current "cable" legislation even requires the signals to be carried if they are broadcast in a community.

This type of implementation makes too much sense (and would permit the viewer to boycott parent companies that he didn't want to support). It would probably break more along programming type (entertainment, sports, sports premium, news, movies channel, movie premium, etc).

I opted out of cable years ago when I realized that I was watching only 6 channels and one of those was a broadcast network (Fox). I can buy several DVDs a month for the price of a cable bill and OWN the programming that I want to see.

My guess - and it is just a guess, of course - is that this is what they'll try at first, especially when the local cable company is directly related (Time Warner Cable will want to offer an all-AOLTW block, for example). But then one of the satellite companies will go all-out "a la carte" (most likely Rupert Murdoch with DirecTV; he hates the other media comglomerates AND the cable companies for how they screwed him over when he was launching FNC), and the network owners won't be able to do anything about it; they can choose to get only 50-75% of the revenues from DirectTV's 15-20 million subscribers that they were getting, or 0%. They'll take the 50-75%. And once a satellite company offers it, the local cable companies will have little choice but to fall in line.

Yeah, that is the law. The local cableco has to offer an ultra-cheap tier that consists of nothing but all local TV stations and whatever public access channels they run. (They usually throw in the home shopping channels too, since they get paid for those based on a cut of the sales from their subscribers, so they want everyone to see them.)