From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

Director Billy Ray had been told to finish the Comey Rule, his two-part showtime series about the troubled tenure of former FBI director James Comey, so it would be ready to air before the election.

Then someone at the highest levels of Viacom CBS pushed the series until after November 3rd.

Ray wrote an apologetic letter explaining the change to his casting crew, and that letter somehow leaked.

The New York Times called to verify its contents, and Ray says he was shocked.

When the reporter asked him how he knew that Donald

Trump personally had asked Viacom chair Sherry Redstone to push the date.

I ran to my computer and I said, just stay on the phone with me. I'm going to send you the

letter that I actually sent to my cast, which has no such assertion in it.

Ray talks about getting his pre-election air date back and explains why he decided to go for a

less cartoonish version of the 45th president, giving Trump less Trumpy hair, along with better

makeup and better suits.

But first on the news banter, COVID protocol improv.

What could go wrong? Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my buddy in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hey there.

So, Hollywood is in a strange position.

People are going back into production, back into production in a way that might make you nervous and make some people nervous. And at the same time, on the movie side, there is still no real sunshine at all. Starting with the production,

there is definitely a really quickening pace of people going back into production. Just the other

day, I was talking to a producer who has a series going back into production, a successful series.

He sounded super nervous. He, they were going with the protocols such as they were,

and the protocols weren't that much. The protocols, they didn't require people to quarantine.

They were testing every couple of days. And this is the way things are right now that, you know,

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