Nancy Grace beat Larry King for the first time ever on Thursday night. Yes, they're in different time slots, but the symbolic nature of a Headline News legal show beating the "King of Talk" is too significant to ignore.

Observers frequently speculate that Grace is being groomed to replace King-- and for the first time, the lawyer-turned-host has recorded higher ratings than the veteran interviewer. At 8pm, Grace averaged 879,000 viewers. An hour later, King delivered 756,000.

The 10pm repeat of Grace came close to beating NewsNight with Aaron Brown, as well: Grace had 437,000 viewers at 10pm, compared to 498,000 for Brown. Update: 11:24am: "Paula Zahn was covering for Aaron Brown Thursday night which would likely explain the low numbers there," an e-mailer says...