Patent ID: 8250605

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining, by a network terminal, a viewing history associated with a user of the network terminal; maintaining, by the network terminal, a viewer profile associated with the user, the viewer profile comprising data received from a source external to the network terminal and representing at least one attribute associated with the user; detecting, by the network terminal, an occurrence of an unforeseen external news event not associated with the user; determining, by the network terminal, a program score for each of a plurality of video programs accessible via the network terminal by processing metadata associated with each of the video programs with the viewer profile; determining, by the network terminal, a first program category list corresponding to a first program category and comprising a first ordered list of a first subset of the video programs, wherein each of the video programs in the first subset of the video programs has a first common attribute defined by the metadata, wherein the first ordered list is determined by the program scores of each of the first subset of the video programs and a weighting factor related to the occurrence of the unforeseen external news event; determining, by the network terminal, a second program category list corresponding to a second program category and comprising a second ordered list of a second subset of the video programs, wherein each of the video programs in the second subset of the video programs has a second common attribute defined by the metadata, wherein the second ordered list is determined by the program scores of each of the second subset of the video programs and a weighting factor related to the occurrence of the unforeseen external news event; displaying, by the network terminal, the first and second categories in a first column of an electronic program guide in accordance with a presentation order based on the occurrence of the unforeseen external news event, and at least one of the viewing history, a current time, and a current day of week; and displaying, by the network terminal, the first and second program category lists in a second column of the electronic program guide in accordance with a presentation order based on the occurrence of the unforeseen external news event, wherein one or more of the video programs included in the first or second program category lists have been recorded by the network terminal prior to the current time and day of week, one or more of the video programs included in the first or second program category lists are unrecorded by the network terminal and available at the current time and day of week, and one or more of the video programs included in the first or second program category lists are unrecorded by the network terminal and only available after the current time and day of week.