As mentioned on the Digital Spy forum, this may have happened close to an ad break but is an example of the latest technique that's now used by certain US channels (on cable TV in this case) for promoting other program(me)s, notably pausing what's being shown so as to tell annoy you about something else.
This illustrates just how low (and desperate) commercial television has reached in terms of trying to get viewers to watch their programming during an economic downturn, so if viewers start to switch broadcast television off in droves, the broadcasters have only themselves to blame in this case.
