Can I get a package with NO religious channels and no country music channels? And no Fox News? How dare they discriminate against those of us WITHOUT families?! (or those of us whose family values could conceivably INCLUDE Jon Stewart.)

Once I called my cable company (Comcast, as a matter of fact) and offered to trade them some of the channels I didn't want for Ovation, Trio and something else. They laughed, and gave me the channels I wanted as a package for a year for free.

they just want other people to watch it. This will totally flop

You know, I will never understand all this hooraw over cable. It seems pretty simple: either lock out the channels you are afraid your kids will watch (Didn't Ned Flanders lock out every channel except PBS?) or, heaven forfend, keep an eye on your kids and stop them from watching the programs you don't want them to see. What's the hard part in this scenario?

There's plenty of TV I don't want my kids to watch, and I don't let them. It's, ya know, not all that hard.

I think Heinlein put it well in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:"

"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" – not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it."

I've never been able to undertand why "conservative" groups--you know, the folks who supposedly want to conserve the original intent of the Constitution--continually try to abridge the First Amendment. They must be doing it "for our own good."

And it's one of the options on the table. I hate to say this but the fundies have a good idea there. What they don't realize though is that by allowing individual channels to be bought, they open the flood gates for networks to put out even more raunchier content than what's on there now. Imagine shows like The Sopranos on Spike TV unedited. It happened with the ratings system Clinton championed in '93, the new ratings allowed networks to push boundaries and gave them an excuse if any one sought damages against them. "Hey, it's rated TV MA, why's your kid watching it in the first place?" You'd see the same thing by switching over to a system which allows people to buy individual channels. "You bought our channel knowing full well what our programming was like." What you'll eventually end up with is the FCC losing alot of it's regulatory power as the market dictates what's acceptable on TV and what's not.

I'm all for it, let the conservatives shoot themselves in the foot. We get better more realistic TV, and they get to further cut themselves off from reality, it's a win win situation for both sides!

I replaced my $50 cable subscription with a $20 Netflix subscription because I refused to subsidize the Faux News - Republican Party's Propoganda Channel - and I really haven't looked back

I did not like paying for ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic amd all those other sports channels which as I understand it, represent a disproportionately large share of one's cable bill - especially if you don't watch them. Don't the cable companies understand that some of us resent subsidizing propoganda and paying for expensive programming that we don't watch?

I'm sure that somewhere between the current 1-size-fits-all-150-channel package and single channels ala carte there could be a happy medium of packages of channels that share similar demographics. A G-rated family friendly package should be just 1 of a dozen or more such packages.

I do miss Comedy Central. Jon Stewart is maybe $5 per month funny - but nowhere near $50 per month funny. When my cable company puts together a $20 per month package that contains even half of the dozen or so channels that I watch I'll reconsider cable.

While I'd sign on for a package without Faux News, ESPNs, etc., I'm more interested in what channels will make it into the family package.

ABC Family is out for PG-13 movies, Cartoon Network is out for its late night fare (though why would kids be up watching after 11pm?), TBS is out due to edited Sex and the City. In a discussion about this I'd said Nickelodeon would be in, and was told it should be excluded because there is so much potty humor and bad examples of kids disrespecting their parents. The FOXs are out, plus most or all Viacom channels. What about ABC/CBS/NBC, with all the violence on cop/crime shows they must go right? Discovery and TLC have shows covering the human body and sex and lots about evolution. A&E has lots of adult themes, same with Oxygen and Lifetime and WE. Shows like Animal Precinct on Animal Planet could upset young kids. USA, AMC, SciFi out, not to mention E!, Spike, and queer Bravo. History is all about violence, so no History channel. Shouldn't news channels and CourtTV be out for the same reason?

So maybe the line-up is the Hallmark channel, TVland, Disney, the religious channels, Discovery Kids I guess, and maybe some country music and sports. Is that it, really? I'd pay not to get those channels except TVland perhaps. I could see some people wanting their kids only getting those, but when they grasp that being in a tier means ALL TVs in the household only get those channels, somehow it seems their interest will evaporate. Maybe instead they could spend an hour figuring out the V-Chip and using it to match their particular views on what the kids should watch. Nah!

Unfortunately, several networks will not allow a la carte sales. I work for the third largest cable television provider in the country. When it last came time for contract negotiations with ESPN, my company did not like the price that they were charging for their programming. My company threatened to put ESPN on a pay tier and take them off of basic cable. ESPN countered by telling us that it was either all or nothing. If ESPN was not on the basic lineup, they weren't going to be on at all.

ESPN is concerned about losing advertising dollars. As it stands right now, they can say that they reach X number of homes whether it is watched or not. This translates into larger prices for advertising, if they were offered a la carte, the homes reached number would diminish and the advertising dollars would be smaller.

As it stands right now, ESPN accounts for close to half of the programming costs of our basic cable lineup. They charge a lot more than any other network for their programming. I would like to see an a la carte service be offered, there are a lot of channels I never watch, including ESPN. I just don't think it will happen any time soon.