I too am shattered after being up till the eraly hours for the game. I was off work thankfully but with a dughter to take to school I still only got a few hours sleep.
Few things
In the UK the sport is definitley growing. The hawks being a top team at this time will definitley help us garner more support. You do tend to find that a lot of UK fans are fans of the teams who have won things in the last 15-25 years, Niners, Packers, steelers, and the majority I find support the pats, this might also play into the fact I support Celtic, a team with strong links to ireland and a lot of the fellow fans who are into the NFL support the Boston based team. Other than that you will have pockets or groups of fans of teams, such as the hawks whos popularity is definitley growing in the UK
In terms of TV, we get 3 games on a sunday. Usually the 10AM and 1PM nationaly televised games (this week it was bears v vikes & The manning bowl) We then get the late Sunday game and MNF too. The late SNF & MNF games are 1.30am kickoffs for us so a lot of time I record and watch as live unless the hawks are involved. We also have gamepass, which is on NFL.com and a great service. Its £120 a year, and we get all the games online live in HD (except the games on TV as these are blacked out to increase viewership on the TV) We also as part of that package get NFL tv with total access, A footbal life, NFL AM etc etc. Its a great package for overseas NFL fans
English, I was tweeting with Carlson today about this as I too was raging. The excuse he gave (and kinda valid) was if they had not cut at that time then if the game lasted 2 more minutes they would have had to fill another 28 minutes of that slot. Now considering as you say they filled hours of it with total nonense and non NFL related talk, I can understand. He did assure me had the game been close they would never have cut it short.