The Queen has delivered her most emotional Christmas message ever, paying tribute to her beloved late husband the Duke of Edinburgh, following his death in April aged 99.
The Queen s Christmas speech has evolved since the days when her grandfather, King George V, used the radio to address his imperial subjects for the first time back in 1932.
In 1922, the BBC began regular broadcasts to radio owners in Britain. These were an instant hit. A year later, work began in the US on using shortwave radio signals to increase the distance over which radio signals could be carried. This led to calls for the BBC to begin broadcasts to other countries, and eventually the British Empire Service was set up to send broadcasts to Britain s overseas colonies.
Then-director Sir John Reith warned that the programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good . The weekly budget stretched to ten hours of broadcasts a day, mainly repeats from the main service. But the new service scored an early success when King George V delivered the first royal Christmas Message six days after it launched in 1932.
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