Yep. Time's TV critic was talking about this when the Apple TV streaming service was announced. The gist was that people who expect these streaming services to give them the same TV for less money are probably dreaming. But they may give people the option of less TV for less money.

That's certainly the situation I'm in. I don't really get my "money's worth" (whatever that means exactly) out of cable but I sort of hate to give up live TV entirely. But as new streaming options become available, at some point I'll probably decide that I can live without a regular cable package given its cost even if that means I lose access to some programming.

A la carte is generally not described as running around searching 2-3 totally independent services, dealing with 2-3 different UI's, business models, etc, but having the ability to get discrete packages from a single provider which expressing on the programs you are interested in, and paying a fractional sum that is roughly proportional to the amount of content you selected versus the amount of content available in "the big package". Thus not being forced to subsidize groups such as sports fans, if you are not a sport fan.

I don't really think your statement connects well with this discussion. My understanding of the current discussion in this thread is a general dislike of how the major players are carving out exclusive deals ensuring the content distribution is fragmented and the only strategy to get a decent mix of content requires using multiple services each with different UI's, pricing models, ad policies, etc.

Those are just implementation details, whether it's split out with a single company with different packages or different vendors entirely.

The basic offering is the same, everything for a bulk discount or pick and choose but you'll have to deal with putting it together.

It's not in the interest of any company to do both, they're separate models so they'll either focus on offering a big package deal or a smaller tighter service.