Margaret and I have really been enjoying both Monk and Psych on USA Network this summer. During our viewing, I noticed that the characters from Monk and Psych have blogs on USA’s website. Being a Web 2.0 kind of guy, I thought I would take a look.

What I saw was very good for a TV network. First, they do a pretty good job of promoting the website during the show (even though the little things floating in the corners during the show can be quite annoying). There is streaming content that supplements what you see in the show (Extra “Psych-outs” from Psych, for example). And blog entries from the characters on the show.

Now the problems. The blog entries could have been more interesting if they actually supplemented story-lines from the shows. At least the ones I read really had nothing to do with specific episodes, but rather were general things that the characters could have written at any time. And here is where I really got frustrated. Hoping that I just had a bad sampling of entries, I went to subscribe (using RSS) to the blog so I could keep reading it. They don’t support RSS.

With so many things supporting RSS subscriptions (comics, youtube.com, weather reports and alerts, package tracking, and all the blogs I read), I don’t have time to go and check a website every day to read only moderately interesting content. I won’t do it, and I doubt many other people would.

Website’s need to understand that we are no longer in the 1990’s. We have better technology to keep track of dynamically changing websites like blogs. And people are adopting it. Properly setup RSS subscriptions generate revenue by either embedded advertising or by driving people to your website. I just wish USA Networks knew that.

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After hearing all the rave reviews, Margaret and I have started watching lost. She says she pretty hooked on it, but I’m still reserving judgment. It is intriguing to watch and is certainly entertaining. I’m still waiting for that one episode that just hooks me on the show. Even without being hooked, it is still interesting enough to watch every week.

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Margaret and I watched the Bourne Supremacy with Matt Damon this week. Ok movie. The “shakey-cam” effect really made you think you were part of the action. Not much of a plot and not much dialogue. Quite a bit of action to make up for all that (and a pretty extended car chase). Worth the rental.

If you like spy stuff, MI-5 Season 2 DVD just came out this week. It’s a BBC show that appears on A&E here. But remember that on the Beeb, they have 60 minutes of drama instead of the 42 (if you’re lucky) minutes on American TV. So skip it on A&E (you’ll just get confused) and pick up the DVD’s. Margaret and I have season 1 on DVD.

We are into week 2 of Alias and things just keep getting better. I love the name of their new club (APO: Authorized Personnel Only) and they seem to be concentrating more on the things people love about the show (ie. Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, and doing spy things) and less about mystical artifacts.

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There is a problem with a lot of TV Shows today, they don’t seem to know how to end an episode. Instead of ending like a good TV show, they give us a minute or two of music playing as they some wrap up is happening.

It seems to me that it is just a case of lazy writers who don’t know how to end an episode. They only have to write 41 minutes of dialogue. If you end the episode with 2 minutes of music, that’s only 39 minutes of dialogue, but I’m guessing the writers get paid the same.

I am sure that those 2 minutes make great cinematography, but I don’t care. They don’t resolve anything. They don’t serve to advance the plot of the episode/series and they don’t serve to do any character development. Basically, it is 2 minutes of padding to make their promised 41 minutes.

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