RNA polymerases contain a conserved “secondary channel” in which proteins that regulate transcription can bind. In Escherichia coli bacteria, the secondary channel factors (SCFs) GreB and DksA both repress initiation of ribosomal RNA synthesis, but SCF loading and repression mechanisms are unclear.  Sarah Stumper and her collaborators used fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and multi-wavelength single-molecule fluorescence colocalization microscopy to show that the SCFs likely repress transcription through an interesting “delayed inhibition” mechanism in which the proteins arrive at DNA already complexed to RNA polymerase and block at a later stage of transcription initiation.  The work explains factors that control the relative contributions of the two proteins to regulation and suggests a mechanism by which repression is restricted to ribosomal RNA and other promoters that form short-duration complexes with RNA polymerase.