Infrastructure for interactive television applications

A method for selectively executing an interactive application associated with a stream of a program comprising at least one of a video stream and an audio stream transmitted on at least one of a plurality of channels, comprising:

• receiving a tuning command at a receiver to tune to the at least one of the plurality of channels;
• intercepting the tuning command with an Application Programming Interface (API);
• determining an interactive application type of the interactive application, the interactive application type including a first interactive application type and a second interactive application type;
• if the determined interactive application type is the first interactive application type:
• providing the program of the stream to an output of the receiver before executing the interactive application and without inhibition by the interactive application;
• and
• executing the interactive application;
• if the determined interactive application is the second interactive application type:
• executing the interactive application;
• querying the API with the executing interactive application, the query comprising at least an authorization status query related to the executing interactive application;
• determining the authorization status of the stream based at least in part on a result of the query;
• and
• selectively providing the program of the stream to the output of the receiver based at least in part on the authorization status.