It’s official, online video’s a big deal
Don Day December 24th, 2007
Seems like everyone has a YouTube channel these days. Now Queen Elizabeth II - along with the rest of the British Monarchy - has a channel on the Google-owned online video site.
The channel features about 20 videos right now - with a plethora of archive footage, a day-in-the-life of Prince Charles and more. Front and center is the Queen’s 1957 Christmas message - the first time that message was televised - exactly 50 years ago this week.
3 Comments Add your own
1. Swift Loris | December 24th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
She really does a pretty good job, considering. No teleprompter. She was 31, had been queen only five years.
A lot of what’s on the site so far isn’t that interesting; the “Long to Reign Over Us” series doesn’t have much good footage (although part 3, I think it is, which covers the earliest years of her reign, has some neat glimpses of her in uniform, riding a stunning dun horse sidesaddle as she reviews the troops).
There’s an utterly charming very brief silent black-and-white newsreel clip from 1917 of Queen Alexandra, then widow of Edward VII, touring the West End rose-selling district, with young ladies in wonderful hats and long white dresses running beside her horse-drawn open carriage thrusting bouquets of roses at her (although you don’t really see her at all).
I hope they’ll put up some better historical stuff. The video covering her coronation is disappointing, everything way at a distance, and it doesn’t even show the crown being put on her head. (It does look as though, as the procession moves out of the cathedral, she’s holding Prince Philip’s hand, which is rather touching. That just couldn’t have been part of the official royal protocol.)
They need to include more informative descriptions of some of the older clips; they should really put captions on those videos identifying important people and explaining what’s going on.
Anyway, good on her for moving with the times and starting the channel. She’s far from perfect, but all in all, she’s quite a remarkable woman. It can’t be easy accommodating herself to the electronic age as the person responsible for upholding a medieval tradition.
2. tdc | December 26th, 2007 at 12:20 am
no matter all the bloody criticism, why not check out the NUMBER OF CHANNEL VIEWS?
tdc thinks it puts every local tv station’s youtube numbers to shame.
bloody shame.
3. Safran | December 26th, 2007 at 6:00 am
We are amused.
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