Podcasting has received the royal seal of approval from the U.K.’s reigning monarch.
This year for the first time Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas speech will be available as a podcast.
Traditionally, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) transmits the speech on TV and radio. The speech will also be available in audio and video formats from the BBC’s Web site.
The podcast and online versions of the speech will become available at the same time that the speech is broadcast on TV: 3:00 p.m. GMT on Monday.
Interested listeners can sign up for the Royal Podcast now and will receive the latest episode, the Christmas speech, at the time of the broadcast.
Westminster Digital, a streaming media company, is hosting the podcast. The company couldn’t reveal how much bandwidth it planned to provision for downloads of the podcast or how many people had signed up for it so far. The U.K. government and parliament are among customers of the company’s webcasting services.
The queen has broadcast a Christmas message every year since 1952, except for 1969.