Spoiler Alert: A la carte TV is something to dig i

When you go to a restaurant and order Swedish meatballs, you pay for Swedish meatballs. The lemon-pepper fettuccine isn’t on your check because you didn’t have the lemon-pepper fettuccine.

Your monthly cable or satellite television bill, however, includes fees for hundreds of channels you rarely watch, if ever. What’s more, you’re billed the same amount even if you don’t watch any TV that month at all. And as you may have noticed, the bill’s a lot more expensive than a check for Swedish meatballs.

This is going to change. In fact, it already is changing. It has to.

A recent study by the NPD Group found that the average cable TV package may cost $200 a month by 2020. Well, I’m not going to pay that. And you know what? I won’t have to.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has introduced legislation that would allow Americans to buy their channels a la carte, i.e. you get just what you pay for. You say you never watch Telemundo? Then Telemundo won’t show up on your bill. It’s just that simple.

Naturally, media companies are crying foul, and their cries are noticeably loud because they’ve noticed the handwriting on the wall. Networks are watching their ratings drop, cable providers are seeing their subscribers dwindle. These declining numbers aren’t a blip, they’re a trend.

Television executives argue that if their medium goes a la carte a lot of lesser-watched channels will disappear. Undoubtedly, this is true. Should the Military History Channel or Gem Shopping Network fade into the mists of time, I won’t care a whit.

Industry analysts also claim that in an a la carte world, the quality of cable television — which, as has been noted in this column, is enjoying a new golden age — will deteriorate. That’s poppycock.

Granted, a period drama like AMC’s “Mad Men” is expensive to produce, but since an abundance of viewers watch that popular program, they’ll continue to pay for it. Or maybe they prefer “The Walking Dead,” which AMC renewed this week for a fifth season. Either way, AMC wins. Any network can do the same, simply by producing quality shows.

I support McCain’s legislation, although I don’t harbor a lot of faith it will ever be debated on the Senate floor, much less voted on. It’s Congress, after all.

Ultimately, however, the issue of whether to institute a la carte pricing for cable and satellite TV will be usurped by technological developments that are already altering the entertainment landscape. Time Warner’s subscriber base is thinning out not just because its product is getting ridiculously expensive, but because “The Big Bang Theory” is a lot cheaper to watch on the Internet.

But that’s also why a la carte pricing is inevitable. Cable and satellite providers will eventually reach the point where they’ll have to settle for taking what they can get.

A recent report by IHS Inc. concluded that sales of set top boxes, which connect today’s smart, new televisions to the Internet, will soar by 91 percent by 2017. Streaming companies like Netflix, Hulu and others are perfectly poised right now to take advantage of this enormous consumer shift.

Unfortunately, making the change isn’t as simple as just cutting your cable TV cord, at least not yet. If you bundle your TV and Internet charges, as many do today, dropping your cable provider likely won’t save you money, but keeping the most basic TV package that it offers will. Probably.

And as of this writing, finding everything that you watch on TV on the Web still takes a little effort. In some key instances (local news, live sports), you may not be able to yet. You can stream the Ohio State game live on espn.com, for instance, but only if you already have a cable or satellite subscription to ESPN, which most basic packages don’t include.

This will change in the near future. As the digital revolution has shown us already, today’s entertainment and information consumer increasingly has the power, not its hidebound providers.