[masraum]

You're screwed no matter what. Back in the day, my parents had C-band satellite (remember the 6' dishes?) and they had an ala carte option, but with regular cable, if you want 10 channels, you'll probably be stuck with 300.

The funny thing, my mom canceled her C-band when my dad died and just used their analog antenna. When everything went digital, she got one of the converters. Now she gets 2 or 3 times as many channels as she did before. It seems that there are often 2 or 3 versions of some of the regular channels.