Why do people in the US say people in the south talk slow ?

Well, I work as a subtitler, and that sometimes involves editing speech so that it can fit into a defined reading time and number of characters. In other words, if someone speaks really quickly, you’re more likely to need to edit what they say. In both fictional and factual TV shows I’ve found that Americans from Southern states, as well as anywhere rural, tend to need less editing because they don’t speak as quickly as those from most Northern states.