Rove McManus will host the Breakthrough Awards, organised by the Los Angeles Based ‘Australians in Film’ on May 13th.

The awards go to stars yet to breakthrough in Hollywood. Chris Hemsworth and Ryan Kwanten will be among the recipients. AIF will also announce at the ceremony the 2010 winner of the Heath Ledger Scholarship.

The scholarship, judged by a panel of Ledger’s friends, will go to an Australian actor yet to break into Hollywood.

Source: ABC Online

‘The Bounce’, the family friendly AFL show hosted by Peter Helliar is being ‘rested’ or put on hiatus until the AFL finals series around September according to the Herald Sun and TV Tonight.

Head of Programming and Production for Seven Network, Tim Worner had this to say about the announcement:

“We didn’t think it was going to be easy. We went into it knowing it was going to be a pretty difficult challenge, but we wanted to give it our best shot. We don’t think we’ve done that yet, the show’s still got legs, there’s no question.

“The ratings tell one story. But looking at the show, and from what people tell you about the show, there’s another story.”

Worner remains supportive of Helliar and envisages the show returning in its early evening timeslot.

“He’s put his heart and soul into that show. He’s bloody funny,” he said.

“It’s always been our ambition to come up with something that’s family friendly, as a point of difference. We want something that’s fun that everyone can watch. There are parts of that show that are incredibly good fun.”

In the meantime, Helliar is out promoting his film I Love You Too which hits cinemas May 6th.

Rove has been in New Zealand recently as part of a comedy event and has appeared on his favourite New Zealander’s show ‘John Campbell Live’ on TV3. You can watch the chummy interview on the TV3 website.

RoveOnline has a great wrap up of media interviews while he is over there. Including this one from The Edge FM where the host apologises for a previous PR stuff-up with a literal hatchet burying.

Digital Spy reports that Rove and wife actress Tasma Walton have bought a $1.2 million Los Angeles mansion with hopes of expanding their careers in the United States.

Rove who has appeared three times on E!’s Chelsea Lately has reportedly had talks with host Chelsea Handler for a permanent hosting gig.

The Australian chatshow host, who married actress Walton in a private ceremony last June, bought the $1.2 million property just outside Los Angeles to help the couple build successful international careers.

Talking about the country retreat style setting of their new home, Walton told Woman’s Day magazine: “It’s important because the world is so frenetic. I love bushwalking, and Rove’s a twitcher, so I’ve started enjoying bird-spotting, too.”

She added: “More and more, the idea of having a child appeals. And it hasn’t always been that way.”

You can see photos and the full story at the Woman’s Day website.

The ratings are in for ‘The Bounce’ which screened last night at 7.30pm on Seven in the AFL states (Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia). It scored 546,000 viewers across those three states, besting ‘The AFL Footy Show’ which had 437,000 viewers.

The Herald Sun also gave it a review following its premiere:

PETER Helliar channeled his inner Rove McManus for the debut episode of Channel 7′s new footy show, The Bounce, tonight.

The structure of The Bounce was nearly a carbon copy of McManus’s Sunday night entertainment show Rove, which ended last year.

A clearly nervous Helliar stumbled early with a too-fast opening monologue that was straight out of Rove. Later gags felt as if they were lifted from Helliar’s Pete Space segment on Rove.

A challenge for Helliar on The Bounce was always going to be doing the meat-and-potatoes hosting duties as well as being funny. It’s a dual role that undid super-talented comedian Mick Molloy on The Nation.

Tonight it wasn’t quite there but it was the first show and it will definitely get better. Peter Helliar just needs to relax.

Hamish & Andy have reportedly kicked in $1000 to C31 following yesterdays story from Crikey and reported here.

Hamish and Andy dig deep for Channel 31, kind of. Crikey’s story yesterday highlighting struggling Melbourne community TV station Channel 31’s desperate plight produced instant results, with Austereo comedy duo Hamish Blake and Andy Lee kicking in $1,000 for their alma mater shortly after our story went live. But that’s where it ended — sadly, no response has been received from C31’s other glittering graduates, including Rove McManus, Peter Helliar and Corinne Grant. McManus’ manager Kevin Whyte told Crikey that an email received yesterday morning was “the first we’d heard” of the subscriberthon and that he was happy to take out a basic subscription for himself, pending a response from Rove.