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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your

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podcast of answering any podcasting questions along the way. That's right.

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I am here to help you answer your questions and that's what this episode is about.

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So it's been a little while. I've had to take a week off here just

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due to life and things like that, but I wanted to get back with you today and

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talk a little bit about podcasts and transcripts because

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Apple podcasts, believe it or not, just came out and said, hey,

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on an upcoming iOS, so 17.4, we are going to support

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the use of transcripts. And so today I'm going to talk a little bit about

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transcripts, why they're useful for you, and what you need to know about

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them when it comes to Apple podcasts. So what are transcripts? So transcripts are

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just like they sound. They are a word for word,

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time-stamped, a dialogue of your show. So if you're looking in a

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podcast app right now that supports transcripts and the one that I use as

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a cast-a-matic, you will see the words that I'm saying written out for you on

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screen. So why is this important? Not only does it help, because you may not

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always understand what I'm saying, but if you are hard of hearing

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or you are learning English, this is a great way that you can

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read and see exactly what I'm saying. So you get a chance to

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experience the podcast the same way that others do. If you can't hear very well

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or again, or if you're learning English and you don't know English, you can

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use the podcast, you can experience the podcast just like

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you would if you could hear well. So one of the great things, and not

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only to mention that, but some companies have actually been sued

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for not having transcripts in their shows, not making them accessible. And so

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why not? It doesn't take very long to do so, and now especially with Apple

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podcasts, creating them for you, it's a great thing. So the

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transcript tag has actually been around for a little while.

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Podcasting 2.0 came up with the transcript tag,

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and which allows you to basically say, for this episode,

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here's a transcript file that will allow you to

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to show your transcript anywhere that shows transcripts.

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So what you can do is you provide your own transcript.

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You can use something like Mac Whisper or

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Whisper or any other program, Descript. There's lots of Otter AI. There's lots

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of places that you can go online to get a transcript of your episode.

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And some are going to do better than others. Some are going to be

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just kind of not great at all. I know a lot of times it messes up my last name,

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Lehmann, when it tries to create something. So I usually go through and

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edit my podcasts so that that way my transcript is actually going to be

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correct for it. So that's what I do when it comes to

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transcripts. I take my show and run it through a program called Mac Whisper,

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and Mac Whisper takes it and transcribes it for me. I get a file.

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And then my podcast host actually allows me to upload that

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to them. So I'm using Captivate. Again, if you want to try Captivate out, it's a

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great podcast host. You can find that at podcastanswers.com/captivate,

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and you will get, you go ahead and demo that out.

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But it allows me to take that episode, that transcript of my episode, and

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upload it to their host, to their file. And then, because it's linked in my RSS,

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any apps that use the transcript tag will show it.

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So what Apple Podcasts did is they came out and said,

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"Not only are we going to support the podcasting 2.0 transcript tag," which is

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great because everyone says podcasting 2.0 is not being supported by

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the big players like Apple and Spotify. Now it is. It's being supported by

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Apple. And so what Apple did is not only say you can

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put a podcast episode transcript in your feed and we will show it to

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people in an upcoming release of iOS on the Apple

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Podcast app. But if you don't provide that, we will

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actually generate one for you. And so this is really cool because now

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everyone is going to be able to have their own transcript. Now,

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yes, you can let Apple Podcasts create your transcript, but I would recommend

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doing it on your own. And here's the reason why. Because

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you don't have a chance to actually look and edit the words

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on Apple Podcast transcript. Now, I think that they're going to do a very good

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job at the transcript. But things like my name, I wouldn't

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be able to correct that because it's already up there.

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So what I do is I provide my own. So that's why I still would provide

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my own. But it's great because if you don't want to do that, you don't want to

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spend the money, you don't want to find an app that allows you to do transcripts,

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you can just allow Apple Podcasts to do that. Now, there are some settings that

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you need to know if you're going to provide your own

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episode, your own thing, your own transcript.

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And here is what it is. So in Apple Podcasts Connect, so

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podcastsconnect.apple.com, you go into your show. And if

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you're watching the video right now, you're seeing this on my screen, but you

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go into your show and you click the availability tab.

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And when you do that at the very bottom, it says transcripts. It says,

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"Apple will automatically generate episode transcripts for your show."

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You can also provide your own transcripts through RSS or

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upload depending on transcripts. You know,

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displaying these transcripts will help make your podcast more accessible.

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And then there's a radio button there that says,

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"Only display auto-generated transcripts by Apple." And that's on by default

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or display transcripts provided or generated transcripts by Apple if

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there isn't one provided. So I would suggest that you go in right now.

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Even if you're not planning on doing transcripts

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at all, providing your own transcripts, go into Apple Podcasts Connect

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and select where it says, "Display transcripts that I provide"

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or "Auto-generated transcripts by Apple Podcasts" if one isn't

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provided. And so what's really kind of cool about this

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is, again, you can provide your own

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show or your own podcast transcript. And

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Apple Podcasts supports two different formats. The VTT format or

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SRT format, they say that they prefer a VTT format and that's a

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little bit better of a format of transcript. So what they're going to do

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is they're going to generate the VTT one, but you can do an SRT.

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So the cool thing though is you can go into

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an episode that it already has generated

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feed transcript for. So this is what I'm showing on screen right now is

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an episode of my other podcast that it has generated a transcript for. And you

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can see that if I'm looking at the episode and I scroll down to the bottom

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it says, "Audio and transcripts" and then this is a subscriber only episode. So it's

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under the subscriber episode areas. But then it says, "Transcripts

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Auto-generated." And if you click on that, what it does is it allows you

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to download the VTT. So you can actually download it and edit it

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if you want. So I did say that Apple Podcasts, you can't necessarily

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go ahead and edit your show. You're

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thinking, "You can. If you download it here you can

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then provide it back to them, a corrected version."

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But again, you have to wait for them to generate the

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transcript and it can take a little while to happen.

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It doesn't happen immediately with Apple Podcasts.

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It does take a little while for them. It could take up to a day to generate

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the transcript. But you know what? I'm looking through this transcript right

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now and the one that it provided is actually

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generated is pretty good. And so the other thing you can do is

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then select that you don't want to use the auto-generated one and one

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that's provided. Now in this case I didn't supply one

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for this. So it just actually auto-generated one for me

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and that is really cool because you can

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you can just have it generate all of the transcripts for you.

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So that's the basics when it comes to

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when it comes to transcripts. Again, why would you want a transcript?

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You would want one because it's allowing you to

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provide better functionality for people who may be hard of hearing or

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in some cases want to see part of your episode but want to read it.

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So it is time-synced and what's cool with Apple's is it is like a word-by-word

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display. So as you're talking it does a word-by-word

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display of the words that you're saying. So it's kind of like what you're

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seeing in Instagram Reels lately where it has

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word-for-word transcripts where it's highlighting things word-for-word.

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And with the VTT it can also show speaker names which is really cool because if

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you provide speaker names so if I had me and a co-host or a guest

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I could let you know the blocks that I'm speaking

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versus the blocks that my co-host or guest are speaking

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and that would show up differently in the app. So that's definitely

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really cool. Again, this is not coming this is not out yet with Apple Podcasts

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but I would go into your Apple Podcasts Connect

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right now and make that switch under the show setting

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to allow them to show transcripts that you provide. Again, even if you're not

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planning on giving transcripts to you know providing them through

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your RSS feed I would go switch that on right now because

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one of the things is if you do decide to do that later

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you'll have it or if you do generate it for one specific episode

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then you're going to have that in your podcast

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in your RSS feed. So you can start doing that now.

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A lot of podcast hosts are supporting podcast transcripts again like what I said

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Captivate is one of them. Captivate for me is one of the best podcast hosts.

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Blueberry is another one that supports it and they're a good podcast host also.

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And so you can generate your own transcripts right now

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and upload them to your podcast host to through some podcast hosts

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which allow you to do that. And what's really cool about that is

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just again it allows you to be more accessible

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and more available for your listeners. And it just doesn't

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it's not going to cost you a whole lot if anything. So for me I have MacWhisperer

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does a pretty decent job. That's just a free download for me.

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I could go ahead and pay for it and get a better model

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and I wouldn't have to correct quite as often. But the great things are if you

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supply your own transcripts then you get to control what it says. You control

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if the words are right in the transcript or not.

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Have you started your podcast journey? If not and you want to have help starting

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your podcast journey. If this transcript thing sounds too

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too involved for you I would love to help you

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start and grow your show. I'm also available for

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doing podcast editing and producing and posting. And you can find all of that

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information by contacting me at podcastanswers.com/contact.

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And I would love to help you out doing

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your show, producing your show. Guys thank you so much for hanging out with

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me today. I will actually be out of town this

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next week so I will not be doing a show this next

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Thursday but you can look for a show on the following Thursday.

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Thanks guys have a great week!

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