I was watching Howard Stern on E the other day and when someone cursed he quickly moved to hit the bleeper button to censor. What struck me is how casually he did it. I know there is a seven-second delay but how do they get the timing so perfect. I always assumed that the director’s assistant type would be in charge of that because it needed to be handled fast and accurately. Anyway, how is this done so they bleep just the bad words?
Good ear-hand coordination. I used to work for a local cable station and we had a 10-second delay (actually it could be set to anything, but we kept it at 10 which was the max.) Proper bleeping just took a bit of practice. Whenever you heard a bad word, you switched your headphones from the pre-delay feed to post-delay, waited for the word to come again, and pressed the button. It got more difficult if someone was ranting and raving profanities, in which case we’d just give up and hold the button down. 
I did this all behind the scenes, though. I don’t think I would have sufficient concentration to be able to both do an interview and the beeps at the same time. I guess Mr. Stern just has a lot of practice with it.
So there are two different delays, one in which to censor, and the other to broadcast? So one is perhaps set to half the time of the other? So if it goes live at 10 seconds, there is a 5 second delay feed as well?