This paper considers a timeslot assignment problem in an interactive satellite multimedia (ISM) system with digital video broadcast-return channel via satellite (DVB-RCS). The timeslot assignment problem is formulated as a binary integer programming to maximize the overall weighted throughput and is shown to be NP-hard. Thus, three real-time heuristic algorithms including ratio-based, packet-size (PS)-based, and transmission gain (TG)-based are derived, and some computational experiments are made. Considering the results, the ratio-based heuristic algorithm is demonstrated to be the most effective and efficient. We propose adapting the ratio-based heuristic algorithm to the timeslot assignment problem to greatly improve the ISM system utilization.