Patent ID: 8225352

Claim:
A viewing recommendation apparatus comprising: an acquisition unit configured to acquire first broadcast program information for each of first broadcast programs to be broadcasted; a storage unit configured to store a plurality of previously broadcasted second broadcast programs in correspondence with second broadcast program information; a calculation unit configured to calculate a viewing urgency in accordance with the first broadcast program information and the second broadcast program information to obtain a plurality of viewing urgencies, the viewing urgency indicating a degree of immediacy of viewing a broadcast program due to time-sensitivity of content in the broadcast program; a score calculation unit configured to calculate, for each of the first broadcast programs, a recording recommendation score based on keywords, synonyms of the keywords, and genres, which are associated with each of the first broadcast programs, the recording recommendation score indicating a degree to record a broadcast program, thereby obtaining a plurality of recording recommendation scores for each of the first broadcast programs; and a generation unit configured to generate a recommendation list of broadcast programs to be viewed, selected from among the first broadcast programs and the second broadcast programs, based on levels of the viewing urgencies, and to generate, from the first broadcast programs and the second broadcast programs, based on the viewing urgencies and the recording recommendation scores, the recommendation list of broadcast programs that are sorted in order of the broadcast programs to view.