This year’s Royal Christmas Broadcast or ‘Queen’s Speech’  today, marks 50 years since the queen’s first televised Christmas message and will set a new milestone by being the first posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.

Footage of the queen’s 1957 Christmas TV broadcast along with today’s broadcast posted on YouTube, will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as the Internet is today.

The Queen said of television in 1957:

“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.”

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

In a preview of this year’s speech,the queen, in an apricot coloured dress, can be seen walking into the palace’s opulent 1844 Room, which is filled with lights and production equipment, and preparing to start her address.

She will talk about how she believes everyone has a responsibility to care for the vulnerable and those excluded from society.  She will also pay tribute to the sacrifices made by the Armed Forces. Her first televised Christmas broadcast was delivered in 1957, live from the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

The festive speech, which was produced this year by the BBC, remains confidential until it is aired, both on TV and radio, on Christmas Day at 1500 GMT.

The royal YouTube page — which bears the scarlet lettered heading “The Royal Channel The Official Channel of the British Monarchy” is illustrated with a photograph of Buckingham Palace flanked by the queen’s guards in their tall bearskin hats and red tunics.

Its modern video clips show shots of garden parties, state visits, the queen, the many British prime ministers who have served during her reign and a day in the life of her son, Prince Charles.

The Royal Channel also shows excerpts from Lord Wakehurst’s film “Long to Reign Over Us,” which has never been publicly released. Wakehurst, a member of Parliament who died in 1970, was an avid amateur film maker, charting events such as Queen Elizabeth II’s accession and coronation.

The color images convey the historical events from the public’s perspective, showing crowds holding street parties and camping out on The Mall — the wide boulevard outside Buckingham Palace — to catch a glimpse of the queen on Coronation Day.

The Royal Channel also includes rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen’s parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast Click HERE:.

It also is being made available on television in high definition for the first time.

Royal Christmas Broadcast related links below:

Island Pulse Podcast Queens Speech 2006

YouTube The Royal Channel: