An improved television control system includes a tuner (15), a memory (13), a keyboard (14) and a controller (11). The tuner (15) selects one channel from a multi-channel television signal based upon a channel selection input. The multi-channel television signal carries the signals for a set of received television channels. The memory (13) contains a favorite channel list that includes a list of channel identifiers, each channel identifier corresponding to one of a subset of the set of channels received by the tuner (15). The keyboard (14) includes a favorite channel button (16) and a favorite program button (16) as well as a numeric keypad (30) and channel up/down keys (28).