RUSH: You’re tuned to the most-listened to radio talk show in the country. It has been that way for 30 years. Do you realize August 1st is the broadcast anniversary? It’s gonna be 32 years on August 1st. Thirty-two years, and 30 of those years have been spent at the top of the heap. Great to have you with us, folks.
So, I was asked if I actually had a chance now to put the CarPlay version of the RushLimbaugh.com app through its paces, and I have. Remember, just a short little history. The app was released last week when I was out, and I didn’t know it was gonna come last week. I knew we were close. We’d been beta testing it. So I’m looking, “Whoa, I got an update on this.” I said, “This doesn’t make any sense ’cause I’m not there to talk about it.”
And it’s a good thing because it was released with a little problem. It had a connection error that was problematic. I mean, attach it, get it ready to go in CarPlay and call it up and load the app and you get a banner which said “please check your connection,” and your connection is fine. So, we had to send it back to the dev and rework it. Got it working fine now. And I’ve been putting it through its paces this week, and I gotta tell you, folks, I’m just so proud of this.
I’ve wanted a CarPlay version of the app for almost a year now, and finally got it done. We’ve got an Apple TV version of the app. Now, the Apple TV version of it is video. You got the Dittocam video of every program live, plus if you are a member of the website, Rush 24/7, then you’ve got every Dittocam archive that you can call up and watch anytime you want, and you can share. So that’s the Apple TV app. And that, of course, will play on any TV screen that your Apple TV is connected to, probably your main screen, your big screen, it looks really great.
The CarPlay app is audio only also for driving around in the car and being able to stream live. And here’s what else you can do. In addition to streaming the program live noon to 3 Eastern every day, there’s a tab at the top of the screen, the top of the page which allows to you replay every day’s program by hour. It’s the podcast version. There are no commercials in it because we don’t sell commercials in the podcast version. The commercials are sold for broadcast, but we do not put the commercials in the podcast version or the CarPlay version. So every hour takes about 39 to 42 minutes to listen to with no breaks, and they are delivered like the podcasts are by hour.
There’s another tab called Clips, and that’s in the upper right-hand corner. You click on that, there are segments that the webmaster has decided were really good, were really cool. They can be anywhere from a minute to three minutes or four minutes long with me talking about various items in the Stack of Stuff that day, whatever news event. It could be with a caller or not, and it really is a diverse way of being able to go back and listen to part of a program or an entire hour if you wish, or live every day noon to three.
Now, the reason that I was so excited about CarPlay is that more and more people are getting cars with CarPlay availability. It converts the iPhone to a way to use it in your entertainment system in your car. And it streams via LTE or if you have a hot spot in your car over Wi-Fi. And it’s perfect quality. It’s an alternative. If you live in a place where radio coverage is tough, it’s just ideal. And the Clips addition that we’ve added is really cool too, these little two- to three-minute, sometimes five-minute segments of the program.
So, I put it through the paces, the connection banner is gone, it’s up and running and it’s fine now. And if you’re already a member, you don’t have to sign in. That’s done on the phone. If you are a subscriber, it just works. And if you’re not a subscriber, there are elements of it that work, but you don’t have access to all the archives, you don’t have to access to video if you’re not a member. And I’m not pitching anybody to sign up and become a member. I’m just being truthful with you about what to expect.
So, we’ve now got it covered. We got the app for your phone and your iPad, we got the website up and running, we’ve got CarPlay version of the app now and an Apple TV version of the app so we are covered and hip and cool however you wish. And we have been on the cutting edge. We were the first to podcast our program. We have been podcasting since before podcasting was even widely understood or known.
And it’s been available through Apple and iTunes from the beginning, and now it’s available right from our website, however you wish to access it. But there is every opportunity throughout the day, if you can’t listen live, you can access the program in numbers of different ways, whenever you do have time. And if you are a member, then you have access to what is essentially encyclopedic content. Virtually everything that’s happened on this program in transcript form, in Dittocam form, in streaming audio form, however you want, and you can share it.
You know, you listen to the program and I say something particularly brilliant, which happens a lot, I say something particularly brilliant and unique. “Oh, damn it, I’ll never remember that. Gosh, I want to remember it, I want to tell people.” You don’t have to remember it. You just have to remember what it was about. You go to the app, you go to the website, you call up the transcript of that segment. There it is. And you can share the entire transcript.
Or you can cut-and-paste and share whatever of the transcript you want to share. Or you can cut-and-paste and tell people you said it. You don’t even have to say I said it. If you want to claim credit for it, you can do whatever you want. And it’s a pleasure, it’s a great honor to provide the substance of the program in so many different ways for people to access it.
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