We have presented the results of the first year monitoring campaign on the
optical behaviour of twenty 
-ray loud blazars out of the 28 ones
included in our program. Most of the sources presented a more or less
pronounced variability on both short and long time scales; for some objects
noticeable intranight variations were observed too. We detected the maximum
ever registered brightness for two quasars (PKS 0420-014 and 4C 38.41) and,
in general, our light curves have a satisfactory time resolution, in many cases
much better than those obtained with previous sporadic observations; for some
sources they represent the first ever published ones. Moreover, we could obtain
optical data simultaneous with EGRET pointings, thus providing a very useful
information for all those models which try to explain possible correlations
between the optical and 
emissions. Notwithstanding this, in several
cases we lament the lack of information in wide periods, mainly due to
unfavourable atmospheric conditions, added to the fact that we share the use of
the telescope with other observational programs. This stresses the necessity of
performing optical monitoring in collaboration with other observatories, as we
have started to do for the other eight sources of our program, whose results
are presented elsewhere (see Sect. 1). Some other sources are now included in
these collaborations and we hope to further on extend this kind of monitoring,
which has already shown itself to be very profitable, providing very well
sampled light curves, indispensable for the understanding of these still
largely unknown objects.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the whole staff of the Torino Observatory for the aid and collaboration lent in the development of this program. In particular, we are indebted to R. Casalegno, L. Corcione, M. Marini, R. Morbidelli, L. Origlia, F. Porcu, E. Roseo, F. Salvati, A. Spagna, and C.A. Volpicelli. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.