The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #86

I hope everyone had a nice Halloween! I can't believe it's already November, even though it's getting cold outside.

The site is doing fine, just like always. We could make more money, and I could get some more volunteers....but otherwise we're doing fine. I have all of our great volunteers to thank!

It is taking me a long time to put the site's new design on all the pages, and I apologize for that. There are just so many things to do and not enough time to do them all! I try to concentrate more on content than design.

In the new design, which is the one you see on our main page (aqua, yellow and orange), I use these buttons instead of the drop down menu. I was trying to make our pages faster to load and easier to use. I'm not sure if I accomplished that or not. I don't mean to make excuses, but I am not a professional web designer in any way that matters, and I have to get by on my very limited skills.

We have lots of ads, and I hate to have them, but they pay for the site's basic costs, so they are necessary. They pay less and less, unfortunately...we are all hoping that the economy gets better, aren't we!

One of the best advertising networks I use is Kontera. They have text-linked ads, so they are not intrusive and slow-to-load like so many others. They don't even take up any extra room on my page. The technology on my end is so simple. I just have to put in a little coding in the pages, and that's it. I wish they paid me more, but they don't pay too badly compared to the others. I am glad I signed up with them. If you have a good website, you should sign up with them, too. Visit their website. If you are on our site, please make sure you click on all of the ads because they make money for our site! The more money we have, the more I can pay the bills and keep bringing you great TV stuff.

I was thinking the other day about "success". Many people measure success by money, and that's a fair thing to do. Right now I have other types of success on my site, even though money is not something I am successful with, in most ways. For instance, the TV networks and companies send me tons of free stuff, especially DVD's. They do this so I can review them on our site and give them away in our monthly contest. I get a big kick out of this. Heck, who doesn't like getting free stuff? And I am a big DVD collector, big TV and movie watcher, so it is great getting DVD's I would have paid for anyway.

I was very happy this past month to get free copies of the entire Monk set and the entire Nip/Tuck series, among many others. FX and Lifetime have been sending me a lot of DVD's of their upcoming shows and movies to watch. I got hooked on Terriers on FX because of this, in fact! Great show! FOX and USA let me watch shows in advance right on their websites. It's so cool. As a TV geek, it really thrills me.

Another big perk to my site is that I get lots of interviews with TV celebrities. I was so thrilled last week to get to talk to the stars of "Men of a Certain Age", especially Scott Bakula. I have been a big fan of his for many years and watched all of Quantum Leap when it aired, as well as his other shows. I even have some of his singing on my iTunes. This month I also get to talk to Patty Duke, and the stars of "Psych", and Sean Bean, to name just a few! It's just awesome to get to talk to TV celebrities, as well as use their interviews for my site. New content is always awesome to have!

Also, the networks send me tons of emails with information for their shows, so we put it up on our primetime forum and our news page every single day. I get more and more all the time, plus I do go to thefutoncritic.com and also to the networks' press release pages, and our volunteer Danielle scours the web for still more news.

Then again, there is a drawback to all these things because it means I have to spend time watching tons of DVD's, doing interviews, and putting up news. And being a night person, it is not always easy to set my alarm and get up early to have a phone call, even if it is to a famous person! And this means I have less time to spend on writing other things for my site (or putting the new design on the pages).

So it's funny because in some ways it means the site is very successful, but then again I'm getting less money as I used to, since the site relies on ads. And as fewer and fewer people watch TV, that means fewer visitors to my site, too. So you be the judge, am I successful or not? LOL!!!

I have been really trying to prioritize lately and write the daily soap updates as we need them. It just takes so much work, energy, and time to do these. Of course we also have shorter recaps that our volunteers write, and some of them also write the updates, not just me.

Sometimes we are more successful (there's that word again) than others. I will keep trying! I know people love to read our detailed soap updates.

I am still enjoying Outlaw on the weekends...such a shame that NBC canceled it. My favorite show is still "Dexter", loving it!! That one, and Men of a Certain Age, and Smallville....all my favorites. I don't really know how I will live next year without Smallville and Supernatural. Both shows have just been on fire this year.

I haven't had a lot of time to watch the other shows, but I try to keep up...Brothers and Sisters is always good. Not sure if they have jumped the shark yet or not. I don't like all the changes.

South Park has long ago jumped the shark. What were they thinking with this new three part episode with Coon & Friends? It is so bad, not funny at all. I love the Kenny aspect but...it's a comedy, guys, it needs to be funny!

Check out my weekly Daytime Articles about why the soaps need better writing...

Please click "like" on Facebook, on my comment and link on this page and I might win $100! http://tinyurl.com/36jrdju The money goes to the site, not me....thanks!

Later!