@prisoner-monkeys So far I’ve only done one live TV broadcast which was some F3 and GT races a month or two ago. That’s very different to the Formula Renault broadcasts I’ve done which have all been commentating on races which have already happened.
Doing it in the studio obviously gives you a chance to read up on the races and makes notes on what happened to reduce the potential for mistakes. And if you do make a mistake you can go back and fix them.
So to an extent the same thing applies to the difference between broadcasting and writing that you mention.
The first lesson I picked up from doing live commentary is that you just can’t prepare enough. Particularly in this case as I was commentating Euro F3 Open and International GT Open – two series I’d seen very little of before – so I invested quite a bit of time into learning how to identify the different cars and so on because if you can’t begin a sentence by naming a driver it’s very difficult to say anything at all!
When I got into the commentary box I discovered maybe 80% of the preparation I’d done wasn’t much use, so the next day I got to the track early and just watched the cars go by, practising identifying each one. Having done that I was much better placed to talk confidently in the commentary box. But I’m still in the early stages on this learning curve.