I think good commentary needs to assume a portion of the audience is new to the sport and welcome them with periodic explanations. The show broadcast time is long and viewers, new to the sport and the experienced, pop in and out so you can't limit the cycling lessons to just one segment.. I'm always surprised in these threads when a know it all fan gripes about it.
That's all well and good at the right time, I feel. I won't gripe about being treated like a novice at the Tour, for example, because that's the time when the largest percentage of casual fans and newcomers will be watching. After a few years it can get a bit grating if they don't switch up the analogies they use or the language used to explain it - hearing Phil and Paul dig into the suitcase of courage and tell us all about little petrol engines and big diesel engines and A Certain Mr Lance Armstrong for the five thousandth time in three weeks is infuriating - but at the same time, you can accept that, it's the biggest race of the year, there's lots of people for whom this will be the only bike race they watch all year and they need to be given an understanding of the basics.
At the same time, though, you can go into more detail without completely losing the casual fan. Sean Kelly in his early years would get too technical for a new audience and if you were a complete novice to the sport and were met with Kelly in his dry Irish accent with Gallicised Kellyisms like the "General Classement" and so on and 48-clause sentences about cranks, and you weren't familiar enough with the sport to know what a coup having a legend like Sean Kelly in the commentary booth is, you'd probably be turned off as well. Sean for his part is a lot more accessible and comfortable nowadays, but also a lot more of the audience that Eurosport and GCN in English are broadcasting to are aware of who Sean Kelly is, they don't need to be given an absolute primer in cycling 101 - the amount of races being given full coverage is hugely increased, and so the amount of opportunities for a newcomer to learn about the sport are increased too. At the same time, so is the amount of airtime that the commentators need to fill - if you compare the amount of commentators rotating on cycling now to 15 years ago on Eurosport International/British Eurosport it's like night and day. At one point it was basically, Harmon, Kelly, Kirby when Harmon wasn't available and occasionally Bäckstedt, and that was 90% of the coverage covered.
As a result, though, the number of races reaching a wider audience is higher, so the number of races that the casual fan gets to see is higher too. I think it's fair to assume that there will be
some casual viewers watching the Giro, the Vuelta and the biggest Classics, so there needs to be
some coverage of the fundamentals, but less than is required at the Tour and the Olympics. However, if somebody is watching the Tour of Hungary, or the Healthy Ageing Tour, or Tro Bro Léon, which are usually on bonus streams that require actively hunting out rather than just chancing across when flicking through the channels, then I think it's fairly safe to say that they're likely somebody who is invested in the sport of cycling and doesn't need to be told what the points jersey signifies or what time bonuses are, so explanations for the novice fan should be minimal.
Don't know how it is over on the English GCN, since I mostly watch them in Dutch or French (cos I can't stand Kirby).
But some silences feel like I'm waiting for Godot.
*Gaudu
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