Yesterday it was announced that Rachel Maddow, the funny Air America radio personality, would take over Dan Abrams's 9-10 p.m. slot on MSNBC. How was word officially spread? By Keith Olbermann himself, Maddow's mentor, on the ultraliberal blog collective Daily Kos — not through a press release, not through an on-air announcement, not through a conference call with MSNBC head honcho Phil Griffin. The Times' Bill Carter only got his own story about the change together three hours later.

Things of note about this change:

• Before we were totally gay (and reverse gay) for Rachel Maddow. Now we may actually be a little bit tranny for her.
• Dan Abrams, who was the former general manager of MSNBC and will go back to a more administrative role, is being a really good sport about this. We hear the network really wants him to stay, but TVNewser suspects he'll leave after his contract runs out, as he has interest from other networks.
• Olbermann is more than a little bit proud of his role in all this. "Yes, I had something to do with it," he crowed in his Daily Kos post.
• Olbermann seems to now be officially in control of the new direction of MSNBC. "Keith has wanted someone who agrees with him after his show. He was pushing to get Joe Scarborough out, and that continued after Dan took that time slot," said a source with knowledge of the decision-making process. "It's not about Dan or about Joe, it's about Keith. Congratulations, Keith Olbermann, you now run MSNBC."

We, of course, are slightly less interested in Keith's gleeful reaction than we are in Bill O'Reilly's over at Fox. Remember all the fun he used to have with liberal lesbian Rosie O'Donnell while she was on The View? We give him two weeks until he says something homophobic about Maddow, or at least a comment about her hairdo — which is totally the same thing.

MSNBC Re-Orders Primetime Lineup [NYT]