In an on-demand radio broadcast system (600) in which the receivers (602) have the capability to store received programs, a communications channel (300) is divided into a plurality of time segments (302). Each time segment (302) is partitioned into a high priority program timeslice (304) and a low priority program timeslice (306). High priority programs (336) are broadcast in each high priority program timeslice (304). The remaining programs are broadcast during a plurality of low priority program timeslices (306). This overcomes a problem of the receivers (602) being out of contact and not having current versions of the high priority programs (336).
