Jon Stewart was almost the one behind Jimmy Kimmel's late-night desk.

While appearing on Ted Danson's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast, the "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host looked back on the time when ABC was considering picking Stewart for his late-night gig on the network.

"They were almost about to hire Jon Stewart," Kimmel explained, noting Stewart's manager was "about to close this deal for Jon to host the show." But then ABC executive Michael Davies suggested Lloyd Braun, the head of the network at the time, watch "a tape of this other guy," Kimmel.

Kimmel was unaware any of this was happening at the time, but he was soon called in "under false pretenses" for a meeting supposedly about a Thursday night variety show. During a meeting with Braun, "we never talked about me doing a show," Kimmel recounted. "He just asked me a bunch of questions about (David) Letterman." But then "he decided that I was going to host the show."

Kimmel joked this "was a mistake" on ABC's part, as "they definitely should have hired" Stewart. "If I'm in that position, there's no question I hire Jon, 100 times out of 100," he quipped.

The comedian later asked Bob Iger, the longtime CEO of ABC's parent company Disney, why he was hired and received a playful response that he believes wasn't entirely a joke.

"I said, 'What was it? This is quite a leap that you guys made. I was on 'The Man Show,'" Kimmel recalled. "I was doing football picks on Fox NFL Sunday. What was it?' And he goes, 'Well, you were cheaper!' And everybody laughed, but I knew he wasn't kidding. Sometimes it pays to be cheaper."

Kimmel began hosting "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on ABC in 2003 and is the longest-serving of the main late-night hosts currently on the air. He previously cohosted the sketch comedy show "The Man Show" and the game show "Win Ben Stein's Money."

Stewart, meanwhile, hosted "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2015, when he retired from the show before returning in 2024. Stewart continues to host "The Daily Show" on Mondays, with a rotating cast of comedians filling in the other days of the week.

Kimmel's podcast appearance was recorded before his show's controversial, temporary suspension at ABC in September over comments he made about the killing of Charlie Kirk. But Kimmel did discuss CBS' decision to cancel Stephen Colbert's "Late Show," which the network said was for financial reasons.

Kimmel once again defended his fellow-late night host on the podcast, saying that "some of the information that has been released by the people who let him go can't possibly be true," referencing media reports that "The Late Show" was canceled because it was losing large sums of money.

"There's no way he's losing $40 million a year," Kimmel said. "There's no way it's even close to that. I know how finances of late-night television shows work, and it's just ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense at all. When you things that are obviously lies, you have to assume that there are more lies behind it."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jimmy Kimmel reveals the reason ABC executives hired him over Jon Stewart

Reporting by Brendan Morrow, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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