The Business: A Podcast about the Entertainment Industry that Never Minds its Own Business

Want to listen to a podcast about the latest movies out in theaters (Or with the lockdown, the latest movies streaming for $20) or get the 411 on your latest TV binge such as Tiger King or the flirty romps on The Bachelor? Then check out one of the multitude of podcasts about movies or TV that specialize in content reviews or gossipy jabbering.

But if you’d like to get the “inside baseball” scoop on what’s happening in the actual business of conceiving, developing, financing and filming TV shows and films, then do not miss KCRW’s podcast called simply “The Business.”

For example, The Business host Kim Masters was one of the first and high-decibel voices to ‘out” Weinstein for his decades of sexual harassment and assault.

Then, Masters on The Business podcast and The Hollywood Reporter exposed allegations about Amazon programming head Roy Price and his vulgar treatment of women – specifically The Man in the High Castle executive producer Isa Hackett – and his oddly symbiotic relationship with Harvey Weinstein.

More recently, the podcast covered the dustup between Universal Studios and AMC Theaters about Universal’s decision to offer its potential summer hit movie Trolls World Tour to TV and streaming On Demand for $20.

Birth of the business

The Business is produced by KCRW, a National Public Radio (NPR) member station that broadcasts from the campus of Santa Monica College. KCRW airs original news and music shows as well as programming from NPR and other affiliates.

KCRW has been aggressive in the podcast space for several years with an impressive roster of podcasts including Left Right & Center, The Treatment, and To The Point.

The Business podcast was developed by influential and ground-breaking KCRW producer / host Matt Holzman, who passed away in mid-April at only 56 years old.

Since its inception, The Business has developed a loyal and sustainable following, largely due to Holzman’s prescience to tap Kim Masters to host the podcast. Masters, an editor-at-large for The Hollywood Reporter, has an impressive resume covering the entertainment business, working for The Daily Beast, NPR, Vanity Fair, Slate, The Washington Post‘s style section, and Time.

Masters is also the author of The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else and co-author with Nancy Griffin of Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood. In 2011, Masters was named Entertainment Reporter of the Year at the Los Angeles Press Club’s 53rd Awards Gala.

In 2018, Masters accepted a Distinguished Journalist Award from the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

"The thing is that I had only covered law, and they said, 'Why don’t you cover Hollywood?'" said Masters during her acceptance speech. "That was an exercise in imagination that I don’t think you see in editors often enough."

Interviewed for this review, Masters reminisced, “I was in print for many years and though I was interested in radio, I had no idea how to start. Finally I had a contract with Esquire for a column every other month, which left me with some time on my hands.”

“I approached Marketplace to see if they'd be interested in short analysis pieces about the entertainment industry,” Masters continues. “They said yes but rejected every idea I pitched so I gave up. Months later they circled back and asked if I had radio experience. I didn't but they had me come into record so they could check out my voice. I had no idea how that would go but it was clear they were very pleased. At that point, they gradually started teaching me how to do radio, giving me increasingly challenging assignments.”

Format simplicity

The format of The Business is the essence of clean design. First, Masters speaks to “her partner in banter” Matt Belloni, who had been the Editorial Director for The Hollywood Reporter for the last four years before resigning in early April. Belloni and Masters tackle topics that include Bob Iger’s abrupt resignation as Disney CEO, the burgeoning growth of streaming services like Apple TV Plus, leadership changes at MGM, censorship of some content by the Chinese government, the sale of Fox movie studio and TV production network, Shari Redstone versus Les Moonves and NBC News’ miscues over Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein investigation.

The Belloni-Masters bantering sessions exude a conversational ease and incisive sapience that enables listeners to understand the discussion topic, inspect the issues with surgical precision and infuse meaning into their insights. Unlike cable news talking heads where bantering means swimming in an overheated soup of bitter vituperation, The Business banter is decidedly low volume but high density in insights and eschews the rhetorical cage match for listening to two people with a lot to say with few distractions.

“On the banter, Matt and I decide on topics just before we banter,” Masters notes, “but we are careful not to ‘pre-banter’ so the banter is pretty spontaneous.”

Masters and Belloni both possess the rhythmic cadence that makes them well-suited for an audio podcast. Masters voice modulation is pitch perfect and Belloni’s baritone always sounds controlled, thoughtful and nicely calibrated.

Interview Insights

The second part of the podcast includes an interview with a prominent person (s) in the entertainment industry. Masters avoids the Jimmy Fallon “fawn all over the guests” template for interviewing and instead balances on the paddle board comfortably by asking tough questions and working to capture more than the platitudes and bromides that sports and entertainment people have become accustomed to spouting to the media. Masters doesn’t coddle her guests but she also doesn’t rough them up, either. In essence, she’s her own “good cop and bad cop” rolled into audience-friendly package.

“I try to keep balanced and the more relaxed the guests are, the better it works,” she observes.

Unlike many entertainment podcasts and TV shows, Masters does not use the interview segment to plug upcoming movies or TV shows with gooey compliments and barely sincere well wishes. Instead, the interviews revolve around several key themes ranging from how difficult it was to finance or film a project, how the filmmaker handled interference with studios or governments, or how people in the industry – from actors to filmmakers – dealt with personal struggles before finally finding success.

The podcast has even covered critical and financial failures in the industry with an eye toward analysis and retrospection instead of the more typical denunciation and put-downs.

“I've had many favorite episodes,” Masters says, discussing the history of her podcast interviews.

Masters continues, “recently, I'd say our two-parter with director Kevin Smith about Stan Lee, his heart attack and his interaction with Harvey Weinstein was a favorite as well as the interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg about his new short-form video service called Quibi.”

Masters also cites her interview with director Lulu Wang about the challenges making the successful indie film The Farewell attempting to navigate the labyrinth of the Chinese government.

“When guests are fearless and honest, those are the best interviews,” Masters notes. “For example, director Tim Miller was very outspoken. He saw that Simon Kinberg had done the show after Dark Phoenix bombed and I think that inspired him.”

Masters isn’t shy about recounting one of her toughest interviews.

“Probably one of the worst guests I can remember was director Julian Schnabel who was on the show to discuss his latest film Miral. He was surly and pretended to know nothing about how his movie was financed, which is silly and his movie was pretty bad. “

Masters graciously praises her producer Kaitlin Parker, who fields pitches or comes up with ideas while collaborating with Masters who contributes suggestions for her to pursue when she sees something interesting.

“Sometimes having two guests is better than one, Masters concludes. “Sally Field and Michael Showalter, for example, really brought out the best in each other. It's difficult when one person is too deferential to the other, or when one is so much stronger a talker, that I keep wanting to go back to that person.”

Masters also dishes on how she and producer Parker toil to tease out the best interview possible for their listeners.

“Sometimes we have to talk to guests longer to get good material, sometimes not so much,” says Masters. “A couple of times recently we had so much good material that we decided to make the interview a two-parter. If there's an anecdote that we like a lot but that doesn't necessarily fit with the rest of the interview or we just have too much material, we save those for leftovers. The leftovers podcast episodes was an idea that hit me when I thought about fun stuff that was going to hit the cutting-room floor.”

Becoming the story

It’s not often that podcast hosts become ensnared in the story they are reporting. But that scenario happened to Kim Masters several years ago.

During the Harvey Weinstein saga, The New Yorker magazine reported that Weinstein had employed intelligence-gathering firms and former Mossad agents in an attempt to unearth dirt on his accusers and the journalists interviewing these accusers about their allegations of sexual harassment and assault. In that magazine piece, Masters commented, “The extent of what Harvey did with these ex-Mossad agents, you know, it's a little surprising how aggressive and relentless and expensive it all must have been. But the threat has been a thing in Hollywood for a long time. "

Several media outlets reported that Weinstein employed someone to pose as a freelance reporter and then email journalists believed to be working on the Weinstein story. The objective of the deception was to assess what journalists like Masters knew.

Although Masters didn’t realize at the time that she had been targeted, a check of her emails later on made her aware that Weinstein operatives had included her into their ruse.

Back to business

So how is The Business podcast dealing with the COVID-19 lockdown?

“As quarantine started to happen, KCRW put equipment in my house so I don't have to go into a studio,” Masters notes. “Our producer Kaitlin can also work from home. Our wonderful engineers are still in the studio at KCRW, which is operating now with a skeleton staff. At this point our guests, like Jeffrey Katzenberg or Sam Bee and Jason Jones, are recording themselves.”

As a podcast host and reporter, Masters is unapologetic about her zeal in reporting about the entertainment fairly, completely and accurately, even in the face of some industry headwinds.

“I get pushback from companies on my stories all the time,” Masters admits. “That's part of the job. At The Hollywood Reporter, we have published in the face of legal threats. For example, former Amazon studio head Roy Price threatened to sue. And I didn't know Harvey had sent a fake reporter to "interview" me until later.”

Masters clings to long-held values about reporting, podcasting and ethical standards.

“It's my job to maintain a high standard of professionalism no matter how others behave,” Masters insists.

Who should listen to The Business? People who want to know about entertainment industry trends. People who crave information about the business of making films, streaming shows and TV. People who want a curated tour inside the inner workings of companies that dominate the industry. Finally, people who are fascinated by the artists who create, develop and market content and their personal stories. In short, it’s for listeners who just can’t mind their own business.