The National Post reports in its Saturday edition the first reference to "pick and pay" Andrew Coyne could find is from 1991. The Post columnist quotes a CRTC official as saying at the time, "There's no point in holding a hearing until we can reach an outcome that will balance all the competing interests." So here we are, 24 years later, and the CRTC is finally getting around to granting cable subscribers the freedom they should have had all along -- just in time for the industry to collapse of its own uncompetitive, consumer-averse weight. Even in the shadow of cable TV's looming obsolescence, the regulator is still fiddling with the connections. So while on the one hand consumers will be free to subscribe to individual channels, or packages of channels, as they choose, they will also be required to subscribe to a slimmed-down package of channels. The biggest impact of the CRTC's ruling will not be felt by the cable industry, but by all those dozens and dozens of specialty channels that have grown up within its walls. Until now they had been able to coast along undisturbed as part of some 190-channel "basic" package. Now they will have to make a compelling case for the value they offer in exchange, or die.