For a guy about to play a "room" of roughly 15,000 people, Jon Stewart doesn't feel pressured as he prepares to host the 44th Grammy Awards at Los Angeles' Staples Center. "The nice part about the show is it really is aboutthe performances. As long as I don't ruin those or trip over somebody's amplifier wire and blow out a speaker, I should be OK," the star of Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Jon Stewart said Friday.

Stewart, 39, said he hopes to include new comic twists and perhaps some visual material for his second Grammy gig (CBS, Feb. 27, 8 p.m. live ET/tape-delayed PT). He scored positive reviews last year after being named host only days before the event. "They just had basically gotten down to the S's" in searching for a host, he joked.

Stewart, who will host NBC's Saturday Night Live on March 9, said he thinks there are advantages in having a Grammy host who isn't a music insider. "I'm not awfully jaded about the music industry because I don't know that much about it," he said.

Stewart wouldn't reveal his comic plans for this year's Grammys, but offered thoughts about the show.

* Last year, neither CBS nor Grammy organizers put any restrictions on him, other than: "I was not allowed to touch U2's fruit plate. (But) I don't know if that was a creative thing."

* He hadn't realized the size of the entourages that surround performers. "I got to see the top of the heads of the Destiny's Child girls as they were whisked by in the hallway. That was neat."

* Without last year's Eminem-Elton John duet and its joke potential, Stewart says it is his responsibility to create a controversy. Or "I may pretend they're on this year's show, just to keep the whole thing going.