Much of the debate over interactive television has focused on immediate push-button access to a wide range of high quality, full motion video programs. Public broadcasters need to position themselves for the coming age of digital transmission; they can do this by concentrating on transition services that offer increased interaction with less risk than do the most complex and high bandwidth on-demand services. While the total vision of interactive television is still some years away, the delivery of data services along with television programs is not a new idea. Audio-subcarrier and various vertical blanking interval (VBI) text services using closed captioning decoders have been tested. Although they were discarded for the most part, datacasting is beginning to make a comeback as decoding devices are becoming affordable. Two commercial projects, StarSight Telecast and the Interactive Network, illustrate services possible now with low-cost datacasters in the home. Spread-spectrum digital radio will soon offer an alternative upstream response channel for future interactive applications. Coupling this with a datacast channel and receiving devices of sufficient memory can mimic a direct online connection. Stations should be considering what they can deliver when datacasting really takes off. Two figures illustrate the discussion. (SLD)