why does it take a few seconds for street reporters to hear what anchors ask?

Question

We have instantaneous video communication (FaceTime, Zoom, etc.) so why can’t news channels use different, existing technology to communicate instantaneously?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

The delay is not necessarily between the newsroom and the reporter. 
Imagine it takes 1/2 second for the audio to go from the newsroom to reporter, and 1 second for the audio and video to be sent back. 

From our perspective it would look like the anchor is responding immediately, but the reporter in the field takes 1.5 seconds to answer. In reality it’s  likely that sending the video is the slow bit, so in fact it’s the newsroom that’s the slow side of the conversation.