Kudos to Channel Five

The night that Hurricane Katrina was scheduled to make landfall, WMC Channel Five dropped their regular post-midnight programming to pick up the MSNBC feed. They carried it all night long. It was a good, smart move, even if MSNBC was unnervingly repetitive and short on anything but "It's a huge, powerful storm," "Rains are lashing the coast" and "Everyone is waiting nervously." Over and over and over again. Gah, I'm glad I don't pay for cable.

Once again, WMC is going to MSNBC's feed after midnight on Friday, for coverage of Hurricane Rita. Kudos to them. Lots of folks from that part of the world are in Memphis now, and the remnants of that storm will be affecting the Mid-South in a couple of days.

SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE: I noticed that WREG/3 and WPTY/24 have both kept to their networks' extended Saturday morning news shows today, though now WMC/5 went with golfing. Good for 3 and 24. The downside is that neither station had their meteorologists do local cut-ins!

It's obvious, watching Rita as she hit land, that she immediately took a northward turn that means big trouble for Memphis on Sunday or Monday. So, why aren't there any local forecasts? Not a smart move.