USER-CUSTOMIZED INTERACTIVE TELEVISION TICKER, INCLUDING A FEATURE FOR VIEWER EXCLUSION OF TICKER TOPICS

摘要

The ticker (460) for an interactive television system has user-customizable features, including a feature to exclude tecker topics dynamically from the display screen (402) while the ticker (406) is being presented and without the need to navigate to a static preferences screen. This allows the user to view only ticker items of interest. Excluded ticker topics are readily re-included without the use of a static preferences screen. Navigation and scrolling controls are used to customize the ticker presentation for the non-excluded ticker topics. Finer granularity of user customization with a topic itself is provided, including an ability to change modes or add content to a ticker (406). Implicit profiling is used in one implementation to customize the ticker (406) by collecting viewer behavior data.