why a pause?

[calimac]

I've never seen this discussed or explained, but I see it all the time. (I don't watch tv news programs, but I see this on clips, typically embedded in online news articles.)

Whenever a news broadcaster is interviewing a person who is not in the same room, a pause of a couple seconds ensues every time the interviewer finishes a question or a comment needing reply, before the guest reacts and starts to respond. It's as if they're not receiving the interviewer feed at the same time the viewer is.

Why is that? I suspect that the showing of the feed with the guest in it is being delayed for censorship purposes, so that someone can have their finger on the bleep-out button in case the guest says something naughty that should not be broadcast. But I don't know if that's the reason.

Comments

[sartorias]

Back when I worked up in town, we were told there was a few seconds' lag between speaker and post on screen. Someone insisted it was in case a kill switch was needed, but others insisted it was a tech requirement. I guess it's still happening, though tech is so very much more evolved.

[sturgeonslawyer]

The most likely explanation is that the link between the two places is via satellite. Such a signal has to travel a minimum of (about) 22K miles to reach the signal, be processed there, and then travel a similar distance to the destination. This results in a one-way lag time of -- admittedly -- only a quarter of a second.

If the signal is relayed between two (or more) satellites, as is likely in a link from, say, Los Angeles to Washington, then the time is increased by the distance between the satellites, which -- since the equatorial "circumference" of the sphere 22K miles out from the Earth's surface is rather larger than that of the Earth itself -- can be considerable.

Then, whatever that total lag is, double it -- one lag for the question to reach the far end, one lag for the return.