Why the Three-Minute Delay?

Why is there a three-minute delay between ends at the Men's World Championship in Massachusetts? If you are watching the round robin draws on CurlTV, you can see the curlers standing around, often frustrated with the delay. [remember hearing one curler say, "This is garbage!" referring to the delay?]

It isn't as if the broadcaster(s) have insisted on the 3-minute delay so they can run more commercials [digression: why on earth doesn't CurlTV have more commercials during these three-minute breaks? They've known for a long time that they had exclusive coverage of the event, and they should have been out there selling ads for the past six months!].

So if the 3-minute delay is not required by the broadcasters, why do they have it? The extra delay adds about 2 minutes per break for each of the nine breaks, adding a total of about 18 minutes per draw.

Is there any reasonable explanation for this policy?