Abstract: A communications system includes a single transmitter and a large number of individual receivers. The transmitter broadcasts a signal over a medium a continuous stream of digitally coded text items, each carrying information as to one or more subjects described by an index term. Each receiver includes a demodulator for continuously receiving the broadcast signal, a profile storage tailorable by each user individually to contain a list of desired index terms, means for selecting only those items having index terms matching those in the profile storage, and a memory for storing the selected items. The user can activate the receiver to play back items in the memory and to choose among the stored items. The items chosen for playback are converted from digital text to a synthesized voice, which is sent as an audio signal to the user.