Every year around the holidays, all the presidents or monarchs give a speech for their people and this has been a tradition for a very long time, going back to the 19th century. The media it has been transmitted to the crowd, though, has evolved a bit since then.

First printed on paper for more than a hundred years, the message reached the telly in 1957, in Great Britain, when Queen Elizabeth first broadcasted hers. She said in the message: "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."

Now, fifty years later, the Queen has embraced yet another new technology, by launching The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first of a monarchy to ever establish a channel, but she is not the first to come up with the idea. She is joining other world leaders, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the British Government, in using online video to communicate with people around the globe, as Theo Luke, with the YouTube partnerships, EMEA, notes.

This year, the message was aired both on the TV and on the Internet at the same time, at around 3 PM BST. I wonder whether the channel will be opened for posting of other things, like the official dinner parties or, dare I say, perhaps bloopers from the official speeches to come. Either way, this fact strongly underlines the importance of the Internet and the lengths it has gotten to, if Great Britain, one of the most conservative countries, has its head-chief posting on YouTube.

Here's the link to the first ever broadcasted transmission, the 1957 one, unfortunately, the embedding has been disabled by request, so you'll have to go through that extra click if you're interested.