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After all, his first assignment after he joined the U.S. news parody show last December was to visit a Saskatchewan farmer who predicts the weather by reading pig spleens.
"They gutted a hog right in front of my nose. It was absolutely worth it. That was my first real taste of Canada," DeGeneres says.
Canada got its first taste of The Daily Show, hosted by comedian Jon Stewart, when it debuted on The Comedy Network Monday. Airing weeknights at 11 p.m. on Ch. 37/34, it delivers fake news, brief celebrity interviews and special features such as the Dateline NBC parody Tales Of Survival, for which DeGeneres once did a dramatic two-part report on a cat stuck in a tree.
While he patterns his newsman persona after Stone Phillips, DeGeneres' entertainment roots are in music -- he partnered with Go-Go's drummer Gina Schock in an '80s band and played guitar in the opening act on a Barenaked Ladies tour last fall.
But he did get broadcast experience during a two-year stint with the U.S. Marine Corps and he's spent eight years writing for TV series such as Diagnosis Murder and his sister Ellen's ABC-TV series during the coming-out season.
His new gig raises his public profile, but DeGeneres says so far, it's small-scale fame he can deal with.
"The way it is right now is fine with me. I think it starts getting harder when you're really famous. I've seen that first hand with my sister," he says.
The pressure-cooker work atmosphere during Ellen's fourth season tested their relationship, but DeGeneres says it was worth the angst.
"I think it was for a great cause and I think Ellen was extremely courageous. I'm really proud of her."
And she, no doubt is proud of his turn on The Daily Show, which DeGeneres describes as a mix of Meet The Press and Baywatch.
"If you cross those two shows together, that's what The Daily Show is striving to be," he says. "I hope it translates in Canada. I think a lot of it will. I think a lot of it is universal."