If you were one of the dozens of people who were watching The Jay Leno show on Monday, you might have been wondering why the "Headlines" segment came right after Jay's monologue instead of right before the local news. Were you stumbling upon a rerun of the old Tonight Show that was airing by mistake? Nope. It seems that, because of the low-and-sinking ratings Leno has been getting at ten, the producers have decided to "shake up" the format ... to make it look like the old Tonight Show.

Of course, changing a pretty moribund format back to a format that's even older isn't exactly a radical shift. But the producers are likely betting that returning to the successful Tonight formula is the way to go.

Here's the problem: people don't have the same ingrained expectations of a 10 PM talk show that they have of an 11:30 show. Instead of tuning into Leno as a reliable way to get them to sleep late at night, they're now tuning to him because nothing's on and their DVRs are empty. There are no expectations on their part.

Does the return of Law and Order to the weekly NBC lineup strike a "welcome back" chord, or does it mean that the Peacock needs a boost in the ratings from a tried and true player? I think it's the latter, because just weeks into the new season, NBC is floundering in the Nielsens, prompting a change in the schedule.

First, Law and Order is returning this week. On Wednesday, October 29, NBC presents what could be called their crime-time line up -- Knight Rider at 8, Life at 9, and Law and Order at 10.

Clearly, with the pick up earlier this week for Knight Rider, NBC is committed to the show despite the weak ratings. Presenting this solid Wednesday block of cop shows will hopefully translate into better Nielsen numbers.

Reports are circulating that CBS is about to fire Rome Hartman, executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and replace him with Rick Kaplan, who until last year was president of MSNBC.

Hartman was named executive producer in November 2005, and helped reshape the broadcast after Couric took over the anchor slot in September. After the requisite curiosity period wore off, the ratings for the newscast deteriorated; it now pulls in lower ratings than it did at the same time last year, when Bob Schieffer was anchoring. The soft-news components of the broadcast were apparently what turned viewers off, and, even though those issues were already being addressed by Hartman, it apparently wasn't enough to save his job.