Some of my thoughts on the live Shakedown stream:

This new lady Kiri Bloore is clearly a professional TV commentator. She is flawless in front of the camera. Whoever hired her for this: good job.

Jon Desborough's commentary was actually not banal. Much of it was even interesting! I really hope that will continue. He did make a couple of mistakes that can be quickly addressed:

1. Every time Bloore was talking to camera, Desborough was looking at her or staring off in the distance. When someone is talking to camera, everyone in the shot needs to be looking into the camera, otherwise it looks awkward.
2. If you make a hand gesture, make sure it will not block your face from view.
3. Don't make any sounds as the other person is speaking unless you actually want to interrupt. If you want to show agreement or disagreement with what someone is saying, just nod or shake your head. Bloore nearly stumbled a couple of times because Desborough interjected as she was talking.
4. The hosts should both be essentially facing the camera, with bodies just sliiightly turned towards each other. Bloore was positioned correctly, but Desborough was turned way too much towards her, so we only saw half his face. This is more the fault of the cameraman and/or producer.

As I said, a couple of easy fixes and he could turn out to be quite good.

Molly Pettit seemed a little nervous and lost for words when she was on her own, but that will come very quickly with a bit of practice. She has had practice interviewing, and it shows, because she was very good with Nandan. One thing I would suggest is to not try to have talking points or times/data on a phone, but instead written down. The phone will always do something unexpected on camera. It will not unlock, it will dim as you're reading it, the thing you're looking for won't load, you'll accidentally swipe away from what you wanted to see, etc. A notebook is much more dependable. See, e.g. Ted's Qualifying Notebook.

Production was fairly good for a first run. A few times they cut away to some shots totally unrelated to what the hosts were talking about. The worst of these was when they suddenly cut to the map of the shakedown stage, and it had annoying background music that drowned out the commentary. If you're going to cut away from people who are talking, there should be minimal or no audio on the other shot! And for something important like a live map, you've got to give your host enough advance warning so that she can finish what she was saying and tell the audience what they're about to see. Again, these are simple mistakes for a first timer, I am sure the producer will improve quickly.

Overall, I would say this was better than expected, and very, very promising for the future. Bloore in particular was astonishingly good for someone who (I assume) did not follow WRC before today. As she learns more about all the key players and stories in the service park, I think she could end up being the face of the WRC as much as Paul King is its voice.

What did you all think?