I was aware some time ago of a device that was originally intended to
gradually rebuild delays when a presenter hit the dump button on an abusive
caller so the world never heard them that was used to basically delay the
interview and edit out the quiet bits. This worked well when the link was
silent between people talking but with a loud noise in the background
produced weird echoes and a lengthening delay instead of just one delay at
the start, and in some cases you could still hear the echoes in the
background of pick up at either end, as the delay was in fact still there
for the two reporters.
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Johnny B Good" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 18 Jul 2015 21:58:13 +0100, newshound wrote:

On 18/07/2015 11:35, David Lang wrote:
It seems to be necessary on news programs to have someone at the scene
of the news for no apparent reason.

T'other night it was "Now over to Fred Bloggs at Hove Crown Court". As
it was 6:45 the court was closed so there was no point in Fred being
there.

However, why is there such a long delay between the studio presenter
saying "Whats happening" and Fred replying?

With modern communication I can't see why there should be any delay at
all.

I find it interesting that whilst satellite delays used to be obvious
when studio presenters interviewed live reporters from the States, now
there is usually (though not always) no obvious delay. I assume that
this is because these transmissions now often come by fibre. Or is there
now some cleverness which delays the local stuff just enough to
compensate for the round trip to the geostationary satellites?

Your initial assessment about the use of fibre optic transatlantic
undersea cable routes is the correct one, your second hypothesised option
doesn't exist.

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Johnny B Good