MSNBC needs to get serious on weekends

MSNBC recently surged ahead of CNN in some prime-time programming, making it #2 behind perennial top-rated Fox News, but if its ever to become a serious cabler, it needs to stike it up a notch on weekends, where its staple of canned, in-house prison docs and banal "catch a predator" shows are pathetically out-of-date and simply a black mark on its news reputation. Or lack thereof.

Just last week, while Southern California, parts of Arizona and Northern Mexico was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, MSNBC was nowhere to be seen, airing a "trapped" doc while running a weak news crawl at the bottom of the screen. It was embarrassing, and made more so, when eventually the cabler had to stick an obviously un-prepared female anchor on at the last minute to fill in viewers, the few actually watching at the moment. Bad.

Sure, MSNBC' bread-and-butter is its opinion-based content with the likes of Olbermann, Maddow, 'Cup of Joe and the like, which serves its well during the week, but for a network, even a cabler, to be taken seriously, it needs to pay attention to weekends too. Especially when big news breaks, even on Easter Sunday.

One can reasonably assume that the reason why MSNBC runs taped programming on the weekends is its cheaper than the alternative. If that's the case, we're in trouble.

Give CNN, and even FNC credit, with its combination of Don Lemon and Julie Banderas mannning the wires for stories, all the while being available if big news breaks, and lately, big news seems to break at the most inopportune time, (the Polish Plane crash, early Saturday, for instance)

MSNBC needs to pay attention to weekends, otherwise it will be jostled to an image of third-tier cabler minutiae.