It'll never happen, because as soon as you move to the a la carte style, you will lose 90% of the channels available. The vast majority of channels aren't profitable, but since they're all owned by parent companies, those parent companies rely on the the ESPNs, ABCs, NBCs, CBSs, and Foxs of the world to fund their unprofitable channels. If you allow a la carte, and 500,000 sign up for A&E, does it make financial sense at that point to continue producing A&E, since no advertiser is going to pay just to reach 500,000 viewers? Nope, the advertisers will leave and they'll shut down A&E because even though it's probably not profitable right now, at that low viewership with no advertisers, it would just hemorrhage money. No parent company in their right mind would continue that money-losing situation.