Seventy-one years ago this month, at about 7AM New York time (noon in London) on Tuesday, June 2, 1953, a 27-year-old Queen Elizabeth II was anointed with holy oils inside Westminster Abbey, presented with ceremonial items including a golden orb and two royal scepters and then formally crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the ruler of the United Kingdom.
God save the Queen!
Technically, Elizabeth had been queen since her father’s death 15 months earlier. But this was the coronation. And for the first time ever, regular people could observe the ancient rituals because, after much debate and with the approval of the new monarch, Elizabeth’s investiture was carried live on British television, transmitted live via the Eurovision network to several countries on the continent and eventually, after films were flown across the Atlantic, broadcast to an eager public in the United States and Canada too.
It’s the event credited with transforming the nascent television industry in the United Kingdom, and -- in a time before satellite links or global fiber-optic networks -- it was arguably the first global media event in history.
The BBC Television Service launched in 1936 as an accompaniment to Britain’s beloved national radio broadcaster. At the 1937 coronation of Elizabeth’s parents, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth, most of the country didn’t own televisions or even live in a place that received the television signal. For that earlier coronation, the BBC deployed its sole mobile broadcast unit, with its full complement of three cameras, and set up station at Hyde Park Corner, a prime place to watch the procession pass by. That was it.
Elizabeth’s celebration was a production of an entirely different magnitude. By 1953, the BBC had grown proficient at covering large, live events including the future queen’s 1947 wedding to Prince Philip and the 1948 London Olympics. New transmitters installed around the country in those midcentury years made the BBC Television Service a truly national broadcaster, and surplus military transmitters were positioned for the coronation to cover remote, still-unserved areas. More than 20 cameras were used for the occasion and stationed in multiple locations including inside the Abbey. BBC stalwart Richard Dimbleby led the coverage and was joined by seven other commentators.
More than 20 million people watched the coronation live in the United Kingdom. The BBC estimated that about 8 million watched in their own homes, more than 10 million in other people’s homes and about 1.5 million in pubs and other public places. By some estimates, that’s about twice as many as listened to it on BBC Radio.
For American audiences, both CBS and NBC -- the two dominant networks at the time -- flew newsreels in from London to their respective broadcast facilities in Boston because the New England city was an hour closer to London than New York City. On CBS, a correspondent reported from Logan Airport’s control tower as staff tracked the films’ arrival. The CBS plane touched down at 4:12PM, beating NBC’s by about 45 minutes. But NBC was prepared for its loss: together with then-upstart ABC, they picked up Canadian coverage and broadcast it for the U.S. audience. (Canada being a Commonwealth country, and a major one at that, meant that the films for the CBC were rushed across the Atlantic on military planes.)
The televised coronation ushered in an era in which the British royals became a regular presence on the global media stage. By the 1981 wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles -- who’d witnessed his mother’s coronation as a four-year-old in Westminster Abbey -- satellite broadcasts were possible, and an estimated 750 million viewers watched live around the world.
According to Nielsen, only 10 million Americans watched last year’s coronation of King Charles. That’s in addition to 20.4 million viewers in Britain at its peak moment -- about the same number of Britons that watched his mother’s ceremony 70 years earlier. Polling amongst the younger Brits seemed to suggest the monarchy’s appeal is waning when compared to previous generations.
Credit: BBC Photo
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