The Queen's Christmas Message

It does seem incredible to me that no-one would check a programme on a tape was correct and satisfactory before putting it on air. You'd have to really trust your colleagues in your own/other companies.


When I did that job at the BBC you relied on the technical review that the tape had had when it was first made and the timings were decided on using a VHS viewing copy. But of course you'd always load and check the TX tape before it went to air - levels, timings, subtitles and of course you'd notice any errors or issues at the same time. Everything was checked and double checked


But then in the past, VT time was rarer and more expensive. Not checking tapes would explain that cock up discussed here a while back when Central were sent a programme to network, missing one part

Yeah, good chance that it and all other programmes would simply be pre-empted for news coverage. Christmas would effectively be cancelled for the TV networks as the nation would be in mourning.

We won't know the mood till it happens but there is no way they'd overdo the mourning around Christmas time. If anything the need for light hearted family entertainment would be all the greater.

They'd be rolling news for the initial day or two, extended news bulletins and tribute shows but at most they'd be a disrupted schedule rather than a cancelled schedule, whatever time of year it happens.

I imagine if it was so close, they’d scrap it altogether. If it was a good time away from Christmas, they’d record a new one with Prince Charles

Surely King Charles?
(Or is it Kevin or Keith or George that he wants to be called?)

Yeah it's widely assumed that he won't have Charles as his Regnal name.


Not only does it have a bit of an unfortunate history, it's also a type of spaniel...

Yeah, he'd probably be George VII, with his grandson eventually being George VIII.

I wonder if the country would accept knowing him by any other name, after 70+ years of knowing him as Charles.

Apart from any Scottish issue, it could be Charles or anything.

The issue this year isn't the Queen ( who is thankfully in good health) but the Duke of Edinburgh.

Were he to have sadly passed before Christmas, protocol has a period of mourning where the Monarch performs no formal duty. Speculation has it that this would have included issuing consent to Acts of Parliament, including the European Communities Withdrawal Bill.

This would have been grist to the news channels, so much so that breakfastesque news musak would have driven out jingle bells....

It's not like he'd be the first to do that, though of course any previous examples weren't known by their original name for so long. George VI wasn't called George either, he was Albert, known as Bertie. Both he and Charles had George as his third middle name. It's widely believed that Charles doesn't want to be associated with Charles I, who was beheaded, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, who staked a claim to being Charles III (The Jacobite Pretender).

The tapes were checked in VTR the morning of tx, so plenty of time to deal with problems. I strongly suspect the VT tape librarians would check the tape box/reel/programme info inside the box as soon as the tape came into the building which was likely to be at least the day before.