À la carte À la carte In restaurants, à la carte is the practice of ordering individual dishes from a menu in a restaurant, as opposed to "table d'hôte", where a set menu is offered. It is an early 19th century loan from French meaning "according to the menu". The individual dishes to be ordered may include side dishes, or the side dishes may be offered separately, in which case, they are also considered "à la carte". The earliest examples of "à la carte" are from 1816 for the adjectival use ("à la carte meal", for example) and from 1821 for the adverbial
A la carte pay television line. While the CRTC required a basic offering of local television services and mandated channels costing $25 or less, it did not regulate the pricing of individual stations. In the United States, the precedent for distributors bundling channels, rather than offering them a la carte, began shortly after passage of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which enabled broadcasters to seek compensation from distributors in exchange for retransmitting a signal. Larger broadcasters negotiated not for higher fees, but for inclusion of their newer, lesser known, non-terrestrial channels. Fox, for example, obtained distribution for FX; NBC for