TV news
Sir: Had Mr Andtlew Boyle appreciated what was involved when the BBC decided to start the nation's first daily televised news service, remarks in his review (3 February) of the History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. IV, about the former Directors-General, Sir William Haley and Sir Ian Jacob, might have been less personal and those about me less offensive and more to the factual point. Readers who inferred that Sir William was Director-General at the time would have been mistaken. They would have been misled, too, if they believed the Corporation would allow anyone to be 'a negative-empire-builder', the term Mr Boyle chooses to describe me, or any other kind. He could have known that during the decade in which I controlled the BBC's News Division nothing was added to its size (or, for that matter, in the previous decade) excepting only responsibility for news in television.
'Hole's lantern-slide approach to television news simply cried aloud for an ITN to show BBC how it should be done'. If Mr Boyle really believes that, day after day, a team of senior journalists and departmental heads approached the task of televising news with an obsessive preference for still photographs rather than moving pictures he will believe anything; and readers of the history may be thankful that Lord Briggs did not elaborate it with those 'revealing' office tales with which Mr Boyle would like to have seen it spiced. Indeed, Mr Boyle echoes those critics who, some 25 years ago, never having seen a televised bulletin, not knowing what to expect, on seeing the BBC's assertgd that in allowing newsreaders to appear the BBC was guilty of a 'steam radio approach': presumably, they had imagined a version of a cinema newsreel with an unseen commentator.
The decision to televise news — taken in anticipation of Independent Television presenting its own service — had been delayed for as long as possible. It had been a question of priorities. The BBC was providing a comprehensive national and regional radio news service, and within its limited finance was doing its best to meet the pressing demands of other important areas of expansion in television and radio. Once the decision was announced, experience of the operation was gained at first hand in the New York studios and newsrooms of the two major networks, NBC and CBS.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly in view of the complexities of so costly a news operation, the corporation was incom pletely supplied with newsfilm, cameramen, studios and the like. Television engineers at Alexandra Palace, where the work was done, performed wonders in a barn-like hall with what they said was some of the oldest of the corporation's equipment. There was no organised daily source of newsfilm in Britain.
Apart from that produced by staff cameramen, most came from United Press International, New York, to whose cooperation and efficiency the BBC owed a great deal; a little from exchanges arranged with NBC and others. Press agency photographs were, more often than not, the only available illustrations of major items in the day's news. Collecting, packing and transporting film from some parts of the world was a slow business, sometimes taking one or two days, sometimes longer.
To create a newsfilm agency, even given the very large "sums of money required and powerful organisational backing, takes several years. Soon after the BBC started televising news, I was able to negotiate on its behalf with the Rank Organisation — which had the advantage of having processing laboratories and other facilities and links round the world — to establish an all-British newsfilm agency, VISNEWS Ltd., of which I was chairman and which, after 21 years, is the largest of its kind. Rather than 'an ITN' showing the BBC how the job should be done, ITN itself may well have profited from the BBC's pioneering spade-work. And, of course, still photographs remain an indispensable feature of the bulletins.
Talu Hole
lwerne Minster Blandford Forum, Dorset
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