The Queen's Christmas Message

I’ve been meaning to ask is the gallery for E right behind them on the left or on the right?

Also with the Queen’s Christmas Message does one broadcaster (the one who filmed it air it) or do all? And how is it distributed where everyone gets a cut and expected to playout at the same time or is it fed from the one who recorded live. Finally does the Queen do different messages for Australia and Canada for instance or are they all pretty generic / focused on Britain?

I think there is just one version, in fact it used to be billed as her message to the UK and the Commonwealth.

In the old days, the Queen's Speech was considered a "Grade one" broadcast. This meant that they had lots of back-ups to make sure it got on air. This meant lots of staff getting dragged in on Christmas Day rather than the skeleton staffing you might have expected, not just in pres/playout but at Comms Centres and transmitter sites around the country.

I think at the pres end they had at least two copies running from tape, and apparently used to have the spare pres suite staffed as well in case NC1 died. It was common practice for transmitter sites to have the diesel generators running and the reserve transmitters running into dummy load so that they could switch across in time.

Given all of those precautions, I would not be at all amazed in ITV had their own copies and an arrangement in place such that if either broadcaster had problems they could take a feed from the other as a further back up.

BBC, ITN and Sky News alternate on production of the Queens message, but they all air it at 3pm, presumably having their own copy. I think other countries get the same message and I think they can play it out at 3pm local time.

The broadcaster which produces it plays it out via BT Tower a few days in advance; I'd imagine file deliveries occur these days too. I think it probably goes out on the Eurovision News Event channel too.

I can't remember the exact text on the embargo, but I think it may not be shown before 1500 local time or GMT, whichever is earlier.

I hope I’ve worded this correctly: So if I’d flicked between BBC One, ITV and Sky One, those were all different files playing rather than one feed from the broadcaster who was making it that year?

It used to be the case that Radio 4 played it out at 9 or 9.30am, but that seems to have been dropped after 1997.

Blimey, that's a lot of redundant backup to ensure the broadcast of 10 minutes that 90% of the population don't watch.

I agree, but it is most likely that it is in law that it must be broadcast (i am not saying it is, but it likely has some sort of special requirement that it has to be broadcast). Sort of similar to how there are charter requirements that the Wimbledon Final and the British GP must be broadcast on FTA channels, even tho likely only a small group of the population watch them, the law says they have to be broadcast on FTA so all effort will be made to make sure they are.

The Christmas Message was always on the radio in the morning and then on the TV at 3pm. Looking at Genome it seems the time varies, 9am some years, 9:30 others and later on it loved to 1pm.

I'm pretty sure they were (and maybe still are) different edits/recordings

Yeah, it doesn't happen like that. I don't know what arrangements there were in the past but ITV have long run their own copy:

Even after all this time, I remember the butterflies I would get leading up to the TX of The Queen. It had to be in perfect sync with the Beeb-not a 1" earlier or later & no one could relax 'til that 'tape had rolled'.Once the afternoon movie was on -then a glass of fizz! #hohoho

— TrishVox 🎤 💙 (@trishvoice) December 25, 2019

In fact one of the replies on that post mentions that last year was the first time the Queen's Christmas Broadcast wasn't backed up on tape:

Odd to think that 2018 was the first year BBC One didn’t have a tape backup running of it!

— John Hoare (@mumoss) December 25, 2019

Yep, why would they un-necessarily over complicate it? Far more simple and reliable to have it ready as a pre-recorded programme than faff around with line feeds

It still is. One of the few a year,

I think the other regular ones are the opening of Parliament (where the actual Queens Speech takes place ), Trooping of the Colour, and I think the Pope on New Year's Day is, possibly