The Royal Palace yesterday
announced the launch of a Royal channel on YouTube, arguably the world's most popular user-generated-content (UGC) site.
The channel, aptly named "
TheRoyalChannel" went live on the Google-owned video sharing website at 0001 on Sunday 23rd of December. It will showcase both new and old video footage of The Royal Family.
TheRoyalChannel will also showcase The Queen's 2007 Christmas Broadcast, which will go live on the site from 3pm GMT on Christmas Day - to coincide with the traditional television broadcast.
The 'featured video' for launch is Queen Elizabeth II's
first televised Christmas broadcast from 1957, which marks the 50th anniversary of broadcasting of The Queen's Christmas Message
(pictured above).
The broadcast from 1957 is particularly fitting, as The Queen makes mention of the advance of technology. "I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us."
Additional footage on the channel includes rarely seen films from the British Film Insitute (BFI), such as:
The Queen's video and audio collection is also available to download from the British Monarch
Media Centre, and available from
iTunes as podcasts.
At the time of writing (12:11 on 24/12/2007), TheRoyalChannel had just shy of 350,000 views, almost 8,500 subsribers and features 18 videos.