The irony of Charlie's statement in Hollywood Reporter, "Programmers have devalued their programming by making it available on multiple outlets," is once AMC is gone, I and will see my Dish subscription as devalued and drop to a lower tier, just as thousands of others may, making the move less profitable to Dish. And I will go back to buying the AMC shows I like on iTunes. I'd like to see an end to these programming spats, but I think it would take government involvement. One of the arguments against ala carte is that we'd end up seeing far fewer available channels because all of us subsidize them. But I never understood that because I'm assuming most network revenue continues to be from advertising instead of carriage agreements. If satellite and cable companies were required to offer a basic package that covered only delivery costs, they could include "free" channels -- those channels that don't require a carriage payment by the provider. Just imagine how many suddenly free channels there may be once the size of their audience depends on people choosing explicitly to pay for them. The result? Probably smaller but still similar selection with far less expensive bills and far broader viewer choice -- and an end to arguments over carriage fees.