Boy, 14, sails into the record books

Those watching today's News 24 Coverage around two o'clock today were likely to be disappointed by the coverage of schoolboy sailor Michael Perham's arrival at Antigua after setting out from Gibraltar six weeks ago.

After a slew of technical problems resulting from the blurry, jumpy video stream from the reporter waiting with a crowd at the Antiguan docks to receive his guest, and further problems when Michael actually arrived (‘You're standing on the audio cable!’) it became apparent that other than uttering the word ‘fantastic’ neither Michael nor the person in the studio had any idea about what to say.

In Michael's case, his tiredness no doubt contributed to his brief replies, but the interviewers should have done better to get some single grain of detail from their subject. Perhaps if they had bothered to read his blog or asked any questions beyond the humdrum ‘how do you feel’ rephrased about ten to twenty times something would have come of it.

Michael's arrival was part of a three-way link up connecting him with a presenter in the N24 news studio and with his family home where a second interviewer and his relatives watched those fuzzy images from the BBC broadcast. Although the studio presenter did try to get the other two parties talking, nothing was really said through the technological barrier.

The only people who could string some sentences together were Michael's mother and particularly his grandmother, whose replies seemed to suggest that there had been some tests on the way. But their reponses were not followed up by the interviewer with the simple question ‘What kinds of tests has Michael had to face?’ The Beeb were perhaps unlucky that the most powerful statement, which gave the story some depth of feeling and a sense of a struggle rather than just a relaxed sailing holiday, was his mother's unrepeatable line ‘He's been through some shit.’

I would hope that in future more efforts will be made to get some element of detail other than joyous reaction, which is a necessary part of the story, but shouldn't be the story. It would also be nice if they should do something about the dreadful quality of the sub-webcam technology that is used to meet the demand for pictures in many parts of the globe, but does so very poorly, and with audio often so full of pauses the barely half a report can be heard, as was true in this case.