said by b10010011 
:It's really a bad analogy because thats not whats happening really.
The reason cable channels are bundled is because the only way to block analog channels is with a filter in the line for each channel. So in the early days the basic tier was the lower channels, one filter blocked the higher ones, and a separate filter or two for the premium channels.
As I said before if you only wanted 10 miscellaneous out of 99 analog channels they would have to put 89 filters on your cable.
The satellite companies has ALWAYS had the technology to do a la carte programming, (conditional access cards at the receiver) fact is back in the C-band days you could get anything you wanted a la carte,
but a package was ALWAYS cheaper if you wanted more than three or four channels. I expect the same thing will happen with cable.
You're statements are true, but not quite. You can very much do ala cart programming in analog cable as well. Not all systems transmitted basic 2 in the clear. In Sacramento, for example, when cable started and for the majority of it's existence, basic 2 and 3 cable was always scrambled. You always required a analog addressable box to receive those channels.
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