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Rove back around “April or May.”

Host and boss Rove McManus finally puts some clarity on the return of his Tonight show for 2010.

rmRove will be off air until April / May 2010.

The host confirmed the hiatus in an interview with news.com.au.

“This show is my love and my passion and it’s always what I’ve wanted to do. If everything else fell down, as long as I still get to do this thing I love the most then I’m happy,” he said.

“We have that (a connection with the audience) at the moment and I think that’s where my enthusiasm is coming from.

“When your personal life is in a good place it helps with your professional life as well.”

Across its ten year life, on two channels, the show has taken extended breaks before. It didn’t start until April in either 2008 or 2007, something many seem to forget.

The long-running Tonight show is one of 4 projects from Roving Enterprises.

Roving’s other format Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? is in limbo with the network failing to indicate its decision on the show.

“With The 7PM Project, it’s a new show and I’m assuming it will need time to find its feet as a program and a format and hopefully people will give it that time.”

The company’s other title is Before the Game, which had a good year as the network’s panel footy show.

McManus winds up Rove on November 15 with a giant outdoor BBQ. He also spoke about not playing along with magazines looking to sell stories with sensationalist headlines. He remains protective of his personal life.

“The other day a stranger came up and said, “I just respect the way you live your life your way”. I’d never live my life based on someone else’s opinion.”

Corrected.

Source: news.com.au

23 Responses

  1. Robert: “Look any other show would have got the chop long ago with the dismal figures he pulls but 10 have a thing for rove and roving productions.”

    Really getting sick of comments like this. Don’t think TEN would be keeping Rove if the show’s ratings were “dismal”. The fact is Rove consistently wins all key demographics, and if it didn’t then it wouldn’t be on. Before the Game also does well. Fifth Grader, however, does do dismally and it comes as no surprise that TEN haven’t revealed their plans as to the future of that show.

    Obviously 7PM is underperforming drastically but TEN is making a decision to stick with it, perhaps because they don’t want to be constantly chopping and changing in that timeslot as they did last year. They want a long term fix and consistency and they see 7PM as that. Whether or not ratings improve is another thing, but to be honest I’d rather see a solid show not get axed and given time to get tweaked and improve rather than be cancelled due to some silly vendetta a few people have against Rove.

  2. I have nothing against Rove (other than his being an abysmal interviewer, whose interviews are too short). As we don’t have a 5 night a week Letterman type
    show in Australia (it wouldn’t work anyway, as our population is too small)
    and/or a 5 day a week day time talk show like Channel 9 used to have, there’s a need for a show like his, so that when both overseas and local celebs from film, TV and music want to go on to plug something, there’s a free to air Aus talk show for them to appear on.

    I’d agree that extending The 7PM Project to 1 hour (and to 6 nights a week to Sunday night as well), is a good idea, as they’d have the time then, for singers to perform on the show, which the half hour format doesn’t currently allow.

  3. Neon Kitten rove lacks any decent interview skills and does not allow his guests time to speak. Basically the whole interview is “you arrived in australia X how’s that going” “your here to promote your new movie/show/book hows that” “5 questions”

    Watch any other late night show from the UK/US and see how they do interviews. Honestly he should cut out the crap on the show and extend the interviews. His interviews are never free flowing either. If they deviate from the scripted sequence he tries to quickly bring it back to the script. He really is poor at interacting with his guests. The most enjoyable show of recent past was when Bruno was on and that was basically because he gave him a good 10 or 15 minutes.

    He doesn’t need judith lucy, peter helliar or anyone else or other gimmicks to run the show. If he can’t get 1 or 2 international guests in every week for an hour including his monologues then he has some real serious problems.

    Look any other show would have got the chop long ago with the dismal figures he pulls but 10 have a thing for rove and roving productions. The show would not be cheap to make it’s bland and the set is dated. I could go on but because I know he is such a big fan of leno, letterman and conan (he copies their content allot) then you would expect something similar.

  4. Neon Kitten: “I don’t understand all the hate that Rove seems to generate.” Took the words right out of my mouth, Neon. The man himself for me comes across as down-to-earth, likeable and funny, if not the most innovative comedian. Rove (the show) is what it is – light entertainment and a a bit of fun. Like some people have grown up with Hey Hey, I (and the rest of Gen Y) have grown up with Rove. I’d rather Rove than another boring factual, procedural or the cheesy Hey Hey. But each to their own.

  5. @Dodge and Kylie, nobody ever said that they watched. If we dislike a show so much that we complain about it, then why wouldn’t we not watch it?

  6. Don’t take the show off.For without Him every week The Only Talk Show that will be worth staying up for is Letterman whenever they show him during the week.
    It could be worse Instead of Rove being Dumped They Send Oprah to the Scrapheap.

    1. It’s clear that Rove now has a divisive appeal. Those who like and those who don’t. I suspect there probably isn’t much in between. The anti-brigade seems rather vocal but last year he picked up both Best Light Entertainment and Favourite Male in awards voted by readers of this very site. He also was fourth in Worst Male. Voting for 2009 will begin later in December.

  7. I don’t understand all the hate that Rove seems to generate. Watching him over the past years – and especially the last two or three – he has really hit his stride as a relaxed, confident and likeable TV show host. There’s an aura about him of, basically, not being a try-hard. He’s being himself, and it’s light years removed from the nervy, stumbling host he was in the earlier years of the show on Ten.

    @mikeys – “same format, with the same dongos”? Err, so do tell us why Hey Hey would make for good television, then…

  8. Rove should do viewers a favour and not come back. He should ask Ten to move Neighbours to 6pm and extend The 7PM Project to one hour from
    6.30 – 7.30 pm Monday to Friday and also do a Sunday 7PM Project show well, which he can appear on.

  9. Rove is a bore, and has been around too long in the same format, with the same dongos. I would much prefer to see Hey Hey on a Sunday night than Rove…

  10. So Rove is starting back in April or May, which I would assume is after Easter.
    I was expecting it to be later than that.
    I wonder what Channel 10 are going to replace Rove’s show with in-between. Probably Sunday night movies.

    As for the footy panel show the article has it’s name as Behind the Game, when the name really is Before the Game, so I expect that’s a mistake.

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