And the Living Shall Envy the Dead (yet again)

From Variety:

CBS is developing a new daytime talkshow starring Valerie Bertinelli and Australian TV host Rove McManus.

Rarely has news so expected managed to strike such a chill down the spine. But there’s no worse fear than fear of the unknown, so lets arm ourselves with knowledge:

“Say It Now,” hosted by Bertinelli and McManus, is being developed through sister syndicator CBS TV Distribution. Show reps the latest of the Eye’s pilots serving in a sort of bakeoff, as CBS looks to fill the void left by the soon-to-exit sudser “As the World Turns.”

Which, for those not tuned into Variety-speak, means that Rove’s pilot – though the article itself makes it very clear that he’s playing the sidekick here – is just one of a bunch of possible replacements US network CBS is looking for to replace a recently axed daytime soapie. And those other shows are…

CBS hopes to pick its “As the World Turns” replacement by July. In the running are a new version of “Pyramid,” hosted by Andy Richter; a mother-themed talkshow hosted by CBS’ Julie Chen, Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne and Holly Robinson-Peete; and a food-centric gameshow starring Emeril Lagasse.

All of which sound at least as likely to get the job, so let’s not get too carried away just yet.

But either way, what tha? We had ten years of press telling us that Rove was secretly some kind of “dark” comedian, a man super-tuned into the world of comedy yet trapped in a talk-show straight-jacket (we really should post some excerpts from that The (Melbourne) Magazine article on Rove – they’d be even more hilarious now), and now it’s revealed that the one thing he really wanted in all the world was to co-host a daytime talk show in the US? Fingers crossed he does succeed – and takes Dave Hughes with him…