The Royal Channel on YouTube
by Rob Paterson
Wow! 50 years on from the first TV broadcast, the Queen speaks directly to the world.
Her 1957 message - about change, constancy and heart - remains timeless.
“If you look through the years, the queen’s always kept up to date with changes in technology,” a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said. In fact, the monarchy has had its own Web site for the past decade, and the queen made her Christmas message available as a podcast for the first time two years ago.
The new site , www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel, went live just after midnight on Sunday. It includes footage of royal-related events, including garden parties, funerals and a documentary called “Long to Reign Over Us,” about the monarchy. There is also the queen’s first-ever televised Christmas message, which took place 50 years ago, in 1957.
A spokesman for YouTube said that the Royal Channel had been a huge success so far, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers by Monday. The most popular clip so far is the 1957 broadcast, with more than 400,000 viewers, while a clip of Prince Charles visiting a school has drawn slightly more than 3,000.
“The content has clearly struck a chord with a lot of people,” said the spokesman, who declined to be named citing company policy. (NYT)
So what is your organization’s excuse for not using this type of direct approach?
