Jay Leno, night 2: Ratings dip, Conan is scary!

Not surprisingly, the second night of "The Jay Leno Show" lost quite a few viewers -- about 10.74 million people watched the show, compared with almost 18 million for its debut episode. Still, Jay plus "The Biggest Loser" premiere were enough for NBC to win the night. Ratings in the second half-hour dipped, according to the New York Times, something that could be a concern for the affiliates wanting a strong lead-in to their 11 PM newscasts. Maybe Kanye West's apology is a bigger draw than filmmaker Michael Moore singing an a capella rendition of "The Times, They Are A-Changin'"? Just guessing.

I tuned in to see what Leno had in store for Night #2, and only got one big laugh out of the show. The final segment showed Jay dropping in on people in Burbank at 9:45 PM to see what they were doing at that time, in the hopes that he could help them get ready to settle down and watch his show at 10. The first home he visited had two small children, a toddler and a baby. After reading the older child to sleep (from a car magazine), Jay came out to try and put the infant to bed. The parents told him that the baby was scared of Conan O'Brien, something that was then proved to hilarious effect. Poor Conan! Talk about adding insult to injury.

The remote segment itself seemed quite Conan-like, except O'Brien's out-of-the-studio interactions always seem pretty spontaneous -- Leno's was anything but. How else can you explain Leno's knocking on the door of a woman who was in the process of writing a song, and he just happened to have Ludacris in tow to help her with the lyrics?

As for the rest of the show, Jim Norton's "airlines suck" rant seemed to go on as long as the previous night's Dan Band carwash segment, and the satellite interview with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise was painful. The "10 @ 10" concept seems ripped off from Craig Kilborn's old "Five Questions" schtick, and while all the questions were pretty dumb, the writer who came up with the idea of asking Cruise which he did best, flying a plane or having sex, should be forced to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" 10 times in a row.

Tonight's "Leno" will feature Robin Williams and Miley Cyrus.

Here's the "Getting Ready For 10" remote segment: