Should cable TV be required to be provided "a la carte"?

[Sensei]

Quite honestly I'd like it if this happened, though not necessarily by the government enforcing it.  When I was in the States, I found like one, maybe two channels I'd actually want to watch something on.  The rest was garbage.  If I could pay for one single channel at a time, I might actually pay for TV.

for once I agree with the digimon

?
now that I have that out of the way. I think cable and satellite providers should only have mandatory a la carte service if they own channels and force consumers to buy them with basic cable.

[Sensei]

Cable companies should be forced to compete for customers. Currently each company works out a deal with a municipality and then has a monopoly.

If there's more than one company in a municipality, then there will be wires for different companies all over the place and it would be a mess. People still have the choice of Satellite TV, too.