Occasionally you read that regulators are looking to force cable companies to make individual channels available a la carte. These stories never seem to amount to anything, but if it ever became a reality what would you pay for. I would have absolutely no problem paying $10 a month for just Turner Classic Movies. I would probably pay the same to get Fox Sports (to get Mariners and Gonzaga basketball) and maybe $5 to get ESPN. Every other channel I could live without. What would you choose?
Other than the regular broadcast stations (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX):
USA Network (many great series!)
HGTV (big House Hunters fans, plus will watch a few other shows if nothing else is on.)
TCM (Ah, the classics…)
PBS (Masterpiece Theater alone is worth paying for!)
AMC (just for Mad Men)
Bravo (sue me, we like Kathy Griffin…)
BBC America (lots of shows)
Showtime (Dexter, Nurse Jackie and a few others, plus films.)
HBO (Boardwalk Empire, Weeds, Bill Maher, Curb Your Enthusiasm, several others, plus films)
That would just about do it in our household.
Actually, I’d love the opportunity to NOT get some channels. The shopping channels, the Spanish language channels, the Pay Per View, etc. I’d also love the chance to ditch all the sports channels, but my husband wants to watch some sports occasionally.
Fortunately, our dish service allows us to create several different lists, so I can have my favorite channels on my list when I hit “guide”, and my husband can have different channels on his list, plus there’s the “all” list.
HBO - original programming
AMC - Mad Men
FX - Terriers
Discovery & History + International versions and National Geographic - huge time killers
BBC something or other
PBS - docs and Antiques Roadshow, oh and History Detectives
Fox - Glee, Family Guy
Comedy Central - Stewart and Colbert
I guess maybe a local affiliate on the off chance that anything newsworthy happens.
I’d get all of the ESPN and Fox Sports channels as well as the NHL/NFL/MLB/NBA channels. I’d also need Versus as long as they have the NHL. I’d also want the Big Ten and Mountain sports networks.
I’d want CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and all of the C-span. There is also a local Arizona government channel that I’d keep. I don’t currently have CNBC World available, but I’d certainly like to have it.
I’d also want Logo, GSN, the Cartoon Network, TCM, Comedy Central, History International, and Boomerang.
The big four networks.
ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU.
The NFL Network.
WB cause I still want to watch Supernatural.
USA
AMC
All the History channels.
All the Discovery and Science channels.
SyFy for SGU and Eureka.
This, especially including the “ditch all the sports channels” option. I get mildly irked at all the commercials which push the sports options and packages as the main reason for choosing one provider over another.
ESPN
AMC
SyFy
FX
Local Networks (my reception sucks)
That’s really all I want.
I totally agree - never watch any sports channels.
Somewhere I read or heard that one of the main reasons they do not go a la carte with cable channels is that people like me would opt out of the sports channels, causing sports fans to have to pay more to keep ESPN and other sports channels.
I vaguely recall someone saying those channels would then cost about as much as Showtime or HBO or even more.
I have no idea if that is true, but if it is true, it would piss me off to think I am being forced to subsidize those (wildly expensive) sports channels and never watch them.
It goes both ways. People who watch the sports channels subsidize a bunch of smaller channels non-sports fans enjoy but wouldn’t have enough subscribers to stay afloat in an a la carte model. We are all interconnected, we are all one. It’s the Circle of Life and it moves us all.
ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, & PBS
ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN news
WGN, TNT, TBS
MSNBC, CNN, HLN
All C-SPANs
Bravo, AMC, TCM, Logo (for Buffy reruns 
)
TV-Land
Comedy Central (for Stewart & Colbert)
Disney & Disney XD (for Phineas & Ferb)
The Weather Channel (for weather)
Sports Time Ohio (for Cleveland Indians games)
Depends on the price. $5 a la carte is still to much too pay for even the channels I might want to watch, especially since they’d probably charge a baseline of say $10 per month on top of that to take care of overhead.
Now, if it were only $2.50 a channel, which isn’t a completely low-ass price since if you got all of the channels on your average package (plus the overhead) it would still work out to a lot more, I’d choose:
– At least 1 C-Span
– At least 1 “educational” channel
– Comedy Central
– At least 1 local channel
– At least one CNN
Now, I don’t have cable since the bare minimum is more than $50 a month. But I’d pay $22 for just those channels.
Not to turn this into a debate, but sports channels account for about 40 percent of cable fees.!
On that link, click on the box to see the channel by channel costs - guess who are the two most expensive, by FAR, of the channels - ESPN and FOX Sports!
Looking at that list, it is hard not to feel like you are being screwed over by the sports channels.
A la carte was great on C Band. 
AMC, Sundance, SyFy, USA, CNN.
There are a lot of religious, music,and shopping channels that i want off my cable package. I get Fox Gnus but not MSNBC. Why? I need HBO , Sci Fy, Documentary channel, AMC, lots of ESPN, Golf Channel, Comedy Central, CNN, Science, NatGeo,Discovery,History ,PBS, USA (they have Burn Notice and Royal Pains)
Everybody should kick in to make ESPN cheaper.
Nope.
Nothing. There are no programs that I watch that I can’t currently get online for free. That’s right Comcast. Drop dead.
No. 1, get rid of all the shopping channels of which there seem to be about a million on my basic DirecTV plan.
But my wife and I have had this discussion before. Between the two of us there are only about a dozen channels we watch with any sort of regularity. Personally I’d be happy with CNN, Comedy Central, Discovery, VH1 Classic, Travel Channel, Food Network and IFC. My wife would probably want Hallmark, WE, Lifetime (what can I say, she loves “The Golden Girls”), HLN and HGTV.
Comedy Channel, Syfy Channel (they must promise to be at least 51% science fiction by volume (i.e., goodbye Idiot Ghostbusters of Real Life), MSNBC (but only if they stop becoming retarded on weekends with their Lockup lineup), Showtime (good movie selection, lots of Skinamax films, though too many series) The History Channel (they must promise to be at least 51% actual History by volume). I’d miss football a little, but not enough to pay for it. Oh, and the Encore Westerns Channel, and the Sleuth Network, if available. Oh, and I’d pay a little EXTRA if they’d stop carrying TruTV as it gives my wife all kinds of idea!
The (Canadian) cable channels that get watched the most around our house are The Comedy Network, Teletoon, History Television and The Discovery Channel, with a little W and TCM/AMC on the side.