Jon Stewart told Rolling Stone that the stories are true that NBC News tried to hire him as host of
"Meet the Press" when they ousted David Gregory in August.
"My guess is they were casting as wide and as weird a net as they could," he said in an excerpt of the interview posted on
Rolling Stone's website. "I'm sure part of them was thinking, 'Why don't we just make it a variety show?'"
Stewart told Rolling Stone he never he considered accepting the job.
"I felt like that was one of those situations where someone says, 'We really like what you do. Why don't you come over here and do something different, maybe something you don't do as well, for us?'" he said.
News and entertainment have melded, Stewart said, but NBC would have been overcompensating on the entertainment side by putting him on the Sunday morning talk show that always has been hosted by journalists.
"That's certainly not an outlandish decision, although I don't necessarily think that's the best direction for it," he said.
NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd eventually got the job.