I really got hooked when I watched the very same BBC telecast on C-Span back in 2001. I must admit, though, the coverage 4 years ago was better. They had a running seat count on the side and had a bar on the bottom calling all the other seats that they didn't mention. In fact, this is the first time in a long time that I think they did not do that...unless we in America simply could not see the more local results. The swing-o-meter is usually always the selling point. We gotta get us one of those!
I have to say their election coverage is far superior to ours. I also think their election process is superior to ours. Also funnier (the Raving Looney party, with candidate R U Serious! LOL!)
Even with the wankers they have, and they seem to have as big a share as we do, they don't seem to have the voting fraud problems and wild charges that we do. The Democrats are turning our election process into banana republic elections, for Gods sake.
I think the diversity of our state-level election processes and the much larger population and geographic area involved does partly explain why we don't do some of the things they do (like have all the candidates together for the announcement of the results). After all, their results they were announcing last night were often based on 50,000 total votes (in fact usually). Ours, even state level races, are often in the millions or at least hundreds of thousands.