Tahu Ronald Charles Pearce Hole CBE (29 March 1906[1] – 22 November 1985) was a New Zealand born journalist who was the BBC's television news editor during the period immediately following the Second World War.
[citation needed] Hole was in London when Britain entered the Second World War and used the facilities of the BBC to send news of the conflict to Sydney.
Soon after the war, the BBC's Director-General, William Haley, formed a news editorial board with himself as Editor-in-Chief and four other members, the most junior of whom was Hole as Overseas Talks Deputy.
[citation needed] Hole was unpopular among his staff, partly for his authoritarian approach to management but also for his extreme caution in directing the news-gathering operation.
In order to avoid what he described as the "cult of personality", Hole continued the audio-only tradition of broadcast news, making only a slight concession to the demands of television.
This lasted about 20 minutes, the first ten being current news reports read out over captions, still pictures and occasionally a live human hand pointing to locations on a map; the remainder was filmed footage in the manner of Television Newsreel.
(The document was part of the evidence that the BBC was to submit to the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, concerning newspaper shareholdings in Independent Television companies.)