As we enter the Memorial Day weekend and people take to the road for family trips, and the summer season pretty much officially opens, I'm drawn back to a memory that any one of a particular age will recall. That memory is driving in the back of a car driven by my parents, watching the Golden Arches of the McDonalds that would eventually loom in the distance, and seeing the little sub heading that was under the arches, counting out however many people had been served a hamburger by the company.
I use to take great pleasure in seeing it go from millions, to billions and to what must now be a number approaching infinity. We all like to watch progress.
I mention this as today marks the landmark figure of 100,000 downloads from The Settlement Channel, which in this day of mass media might seem paltry, but for specialized niche content such as we deliver, i'm continually amazed and gratified. When I rolled out The Settlement Channel as a sub channel to The Legal Broadcast Network back in June of 2005, I gambled that we could duplicate and surpass the numbers we previously got as part of an insanely expensive live streaming and server download program we had started with other providers about 8 months prior. After the relaunch, each month we grew from a few thousand, up to the current number for May of just under 15,000 for the month, or on average 500 downloads per day. The growth has held steady at about 30% per month, and as we prepare to launch our new series of commentators and shows in June we expect that number to double shortly.
In anticipation of that we have purchased a massively expanded server capacity, have started on a doubling of our studio space and editing equipment in our Phoenix facility, hired two new production assistants and by the end of the summer will have the ability to broadcast live weekly video shows, roundtable discussions, as well as audio content from multiple commentators from around the country. I of course couldn't have done this with out our brilliant technical partners at Eradio.net who have worked in tandem with us in building out this vision and putting us in a position to offer the ability to provide podcasting and blogging commentary to a wide range of experts. They are true partners in every sense of the word.
So, I want to thank you our readers and listeners as we prepare for another year of growth and progress, welcoming your ideas, suggestions and participation, and look forward to flipping the sign from 100,000 to 1,000,000 by this time next year.
