Queen’s Christmas message to air on YouTube

LONDON – Queen Elizabeth II will use YouTube to send out her 50th televised annual Christmas message, a British Sunday newspaper reported.

Buckingham Palace plans on posting archive footage on the video sharing website, including her maiden Christmas Day television speech sent out to Britain and its former colonies in 1957, The Sunday Times reported.

The palace plans to post the first of the archive footage on the queen's royal YouTube 'channel' on Sunday, the report said.

'The royal channel is a way of bringing the queen's Christmas message to more people of all ages across the world and keeping up with technological innovation as the queen has always done,' the newspaper quoted a royal spokesman as saying.

Palace officials were not immediately available for comment.

The 81-year-old monarch chooses a different theme for each annual address, the one occasion in the year when she pens her own speech without government advice. In last year's address, she called for mutual respect between young and old and greater religious tolerance.

Last year's message was available for the first time as a podcast on the Buckingham Palace website.

Keeping with tradition, Tuesday's recorded message will be also be broadcast on television. — AP