Labour's YouTube 'learning curve'

Mr Blair's Comic Relief appearance proved popular

Labour's "channel" on the YouTube website is still "a learning process", MP Derek Wyatt has told the BBC.

But he said it was worth doing to help politicians get messages across.

After four days Tony Blair's YouTube welcome message has been watched 11,000 times, but one video featuring Mr Wyatt has been viewed just 86 times.

That compares with 800,000 viewings for the PM's Comic Relief sketch, and about 100,000 viewings of clips saying they show Gordon Brown picking his nose.

Mr Wyatt, whose seven minute interview with Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton features on the YouTube channel, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that to get more than three minutes on television was now "pretty rare".

David Bowie

"In order to get that (your message) out, you've got to use different media, because television isn't going to do it anymore."

In the minute-long video to launch the Labour "channel" on YouTube, Mr Blair said he wanted voters to receive "unmediated" information, "rather than simply everything going through the media".

Conservative leader David Cameron has his own Webcameron site, to communicate "directly with people".

But on YouTube the most popular clip about Mr Cameron is a sketch showing his apparent similarities to Tony Blair, set to David Bowie's "Changes".

This is the key four-letter that political parties have got to think about - risk Professor Stephen Coleman

And various speeches by Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell are on the video-sharing website, although they are far outstripped in popularity by Rory Bremner's impression of him impersonating the Spice Girls.

Professor Stephen Coleman, an expert in political communication, said it was a mistake to think viewers would watch anything - including long party political broadcasts.

'Controlling methods'

He said politicians kept trying to impose 20th Century "controlling" methods on new "potentially democratising" developments.

Professor Coleman said Mr Blair's Comic relief sketch showed "he obviously put some hard work into it, took a risk, and it seems to me this is the key four-letter word that political parties have got to think about - risk".

"How do you make sure that you put yourself out there in ways that make you accessible, touchable remixable in a way that the digital ethos lends itself to," he added.

Mr Wyatt agreed: "Absolutely, you have got to be right at the forefront, kids like risk and they like humour. You have got to mix those two. It's a learning process though."