Once upon a time, cable television was king. It held court in the corner of every living room, its glowing box of noise offering a portal to everything from Sesame Street to CNN to late-night skin-flicks with suspiciously high production values. But in the age of streaming, on-demand content, and algorithmic curation, the old model of “subscribe to everything and like it” feels less like a luxury and more like an overpriced anachronism.

Especially for families who don’t want to subsidize channels like MTV, the perennial bugbear for parents trying to raise screen-savvy kids without daily doses of hypersexualized pop culture masquerading as music television.

It’s time cable providers evolved. Not just with sleeker menus or redundant on-demand libraries, but with real flexibility. A true, choose-your-own-adventure approach to subscription packaging. Here’s a radical proposal: give customers tiered, customizable packages that reflect how people actually watch television today.

Option A: Pick Any 5 Channels
For the minimalist household or the hyper-focused viewer. Maybe it’s just PBS, Discovery, Cartoon Network, HGTV, and BBC. Clean. Simple. Cheap.

Option B: Pick Any 10 Channels
Ideal for families who want variety without chaos. A solid mix of educational, news, kids, and a dash of sports or movies. No fluff, no MTV, no bundled bloat.

Option C: Pick Any 15 Channels
The sweet spot for most. More expansive but still curated. Let viewers tailor their feed like they do their Spotify playlists.

Option D: Subscribe to Everything
For the traditionalists or those with more dollars than discernment. Nothing changes here. All 700+ channels, commercials and all. Bless you, old souls.

This isn’t just about consumer choice. It’s about fairness. It’s about no longer forcing customers to pay for content they find offensive, irrelevant, or simply unnecessary. A la carte pricing, true a la carte, not the cynical “you can remove ESPN if you pay a surcharge to breathe” version, is overdue.

It’s good economics. It’s good ethics. And it’s what the post-streaming consumer deserves.

Cable isn’t dead. But it is stagnating. If providers want to stay in the game, they need to remember who they’re serving. Not the advertisers. Not the aging boardrooms. But the families, the cord-near-cutters, and yes, even the MTV-averse.

Give us choice or give us YouTube.