32. An entertainment system comprising: a broadcast network including a plurality of multiplexed channels each carrying video signals; a content distribution system to broadcast television content in video signals carried over the broadcast network on the plurality of multiplexed channels, the video signals carried by each said channel including content programming and a closed captioning stream of textual data; a plurality of client devices, each including one or more tuners for receiving the video signals carried on the multiplexed channels of the broadcast network; and an interest assessment system including: a closed caption decoder to extract, from each said channel, the closed captioning stream of textual data; a processor executing an application to search, for each said channel, the closed captioning stream of textual data for occurrences of textual data matching first search terms of an active list and second search terms of a passive list, wherein the application comprises a component for comparing the closed captioning stream of textual data to both the active list and the passive list; the active list comprising one or more predefined first character strings as the first search terms; the passive list comprising one or more second character strings as the second search terms that have been extracted by the closed caption decoder from one or more previously received closed captioning streams of textual data of previously received video signals that the viewer has viewed or recorded, the one or more second character strings being extracted base on a frequency of occurrence in the previously received textual data; the comparing including determining whether a number of matches of the first search terms of the active list and the second search terms of the passive list with the textual data exceeds a threshold number, wherein when the number of matches of the first search terms of the active list and the second search terms of the passive list does not exceed the threshold number after a predetermined period of time, ceasing to search a first closed captioning stream of textual data from a first channel before an end of the first closed captioning stream is reached, deleting the corresponding content programming from the buffer, and searching instead a second closed captioning stream of textual data from a second channel; and an output device to output a notification when the number of matches of the first search terms of the active list or the second search terms of the passive list in comparison with the textual data exceeds the threshold number indicating that content programming corresponding to viewer interests has been located.
34. The entertainment system as defined in claim 32 , wherein the output device outputs the notification by sending a notification message to a telephone number or email address of the viewer that the content programming corresponding to viewer interests has been located.