Cycle Chic said:
Whats all this 'LEAD COMMENTATOR' rubbish ??? if there are 2 or even 1 person commentating who have experience as an ex-professional in the sport - what does it matter ?
If Kelly did it on his own it would be fine....at least we wouldn't have to listen to scenery descriptions or the 'blue and pink team'....we'd get information when we needed it.
In almost every sport under the sun, commentary teams consist of the following:
A play by play (PBP) man, whose job is to call the action. This is somebody whose job is to tell you what is happening, and this job is
almost invariably done by a 'career commentator'.
An analyst (or, in the US, color commentator), whose job is, as the title suggests, to analyse the action. This is somebody to tell you, after the play by play man has told you what has happened,
why it happened, and also to hypothesise on what will happen. This job is
almost invariably done by somebody with experience in the sport.
Only in sports where the pace is sufficiently slow that the action can readily speak for itself and there is ample time to discuss every piece of action before the next, does this formula tend to be broken. Football, American football, Formula 1, cycling, tennis, swimming, athletics, they all follow this formula. Even fricking Basque pelota does - you have a lead commentator (Xabier Euzkitze) who has no experience in the sport, who calls the live action while the experienced former pro (Joxan Tolosa) interprets the information and relays his analysis in the pauses between points.
This works very well on sports like athletics (at least in shorter events and especially in the field events), or tennis, or Alpine skiing, where each event is short or where each competitor goes individually. It means there are significant enough regular pauses for the analyst to be able to be quiet and let the lead commentator do their job during the event, then they have ample time to discuss the event afterwards.
Cycling has a bit of a problem in that regard; often for large swathes of time little is happening, so there is little action for the analyst to analyse, meaning you get large amounts of waffle from the lead commentator trying to fill time, especially if the analyst isn't able or willing to engage in that (as you might get from Kelly sometimes), and also without clearly delineated breaks in action, the analyst may struggle considering when the right time to make their point is (case in point, the Suances stage of the 2008 Vuelta, when Valverde went off the back of the péloton to get his rain cape, then a crash caused a split. Valverde was picked up at the back of the péloton by cameras twice, but as Kelly was in the middle of a 78-clause run-on sentence about some technical issue, it hadn't been duly noted, and both Harmon and Kelly were then dumbfounded when the péloton split and Valverde was behind it). At this time you may benefit from having two ex-pros in the booth, as they could produce something more insightful than the general chit-chat. However, when the action hots up in cycling, the analyst tends to be more quiet, except for occasionally identifying a move. There's a very good reason why, for all the positive contributions they make to Eurosport's coverage, you almost never hear Kelly, or Backstedt, or even Smith (who does a very creditable job of bridging the two roles), calling the sprint: not because they're struggling to be heard over Harmon or Kirby, but in fact
because they wouldn't be good at it, because it's not what they're there to do.
Perhaps the three-man booth is the way to go. This works in the Tour sometimes with Kirby adding the inanity and local interest leaving Kelly to do his analysis without having to be poked and prodded for chit-chat, which he often seems unwilling to participate in. However, if you had one lead-commentator, then a guy like Smith, then the analyst, then you could give each a bit of a break here and there. There was a time when Harmon was ill or something or out of the booth for some reason and Kelly had to handle it on his own - you quickly learnt why Harmon is there. I'll use Harmon, Smith and Kelly as my examples. When little is happening, if Kelly doesn't want to contribute, then Harmon and Smith can give us the chit-chat, however with Smith's pro cycling background it can be kept relevant; you still have the pro commentator who can ask the questions that the naïve viewer may want answering (let's face it, as ex-pros Smith and Kelly have a lot of knowledge, and much of the audience do not necessarily share this, so having somebody to voice the thoughts of the naïve viewer is still necessary) and poke and prod the analyst(s) with the right questions, but with two analysts to compare and contrast opinions, we would get a) more time dedicated to analysis when little is happening, as you have twice as many voices to be heard plus any resultant debate from if they disagree, and b) with less time to fill, less pressure on Harmon's shoulders and he doesn't need to scramble around awkwardly hunting for subjects to talk about when Kelly's unwilling to engage and they're 60k from the finish of a flat stage with the small break of plucky guys from French ProContinental teams dangling out front but clearly under control.
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