The Whole Delivery

With how things were going in the 9 PM slot, it was about time for it to happen . Larry King, whose nightly CNN talk show was long a required stomping ground for striving politicians and contrite celebrities, announced Tuesday that he is going to step down from the program in the fall. But he isn't entire gone from television, and he even broke it on Twitter .

(Photo from Rob Bennett for The New York Times) Oh yes, this is great news indeed. First, this great diary from Stu hunter over at the Kos : In television, ratings are the bottom line, and Rachel Maddow has little to worry about these days. In the six weeks since Maddow took over the 9:00 p.m. hour on MSNBC, she's doubled the timeslot's audience. "I'm pinching myself," Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, tells The New York Times. More, from the NY Times about Rachel's success . More important for her bosses at MSNBC is that “The Rachel Maddow Show,” her left-leaning news and commentary program, has averaged a higher rating among 25- to 54-year-olds than “Larry King Live” on CNN for 13 of the 25 nights she has been host. While the average total audience of her program remains slightly smaller than that of Mr. King’s, Ms. Maddow, 35, has made MSNBC competitive in that time slot for the first time in a decade. The channel at that hour has an average viewers...