From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business.

Multi-hyphenate Jud Apatow has seen original comedies flourish at the box office, but not so much lately.

He says even though it's been years since a hangover-sized hit, comedy is still very much alive in theaters.

I do think that there's so much comedy in all the other movies that comedy has been co-opted.

Oh, the Marvel movies are kind of comedies.

You know, Barbie is a comedy. Minecraft is a comedy. So people can say, oh, comedies aren't doing well, but I don't know. I think they've just married into everything else. Apatad joins us to talk about his memoir, comedy nerd, a scrapbook that traces his journey from a stand-up-obsessed kid to one of Hollywood's most influential comedy voices.

He tells us about his early days, interviewing his comedy heroes, luring them in by telling them he was host of a radio show, though he didn't mention that it was a high school show and the signal barely reached

the parking lot. But first we banter. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW. I am joined by my

partner in banter. Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So David Ellison had his first

earnings call reporting third quarter earnings for Paramount now that he's in charge.

You were listening to the investor call. I wasn't, but I read the reviews. They did lose money,

but that wasn't what people saw, I think, as the takeaway. They gave a little bit of an indication

of what they want to do going forward. They're not going to sell the cable channels.

I thought it was interesting that Ellison sort of sent a signal that, you know, they're only going to go so far to get Warners. I think they really want it, but he said it is important to know that there's no must-haves for us. We look at this as buy versus build, and we absolutely have the ability to build to get to where we

want to go. So in other words, we don't really need you, Warners, and if we don't get you, nobody should take that as a sign of disaster. Yeah, well, meanwhile, they keep raising their offer for the company. So their actions suggest they very much do want this company. I know he has to say that. Yeah, it was fine. You mean, he sounded like a

media CEO. He didn't give a lot of information. They did reveal some pretty relentless cost

cutting. I mean, on top of the $3 billion that they have promised in synergies, which means

cost cutting, which means layoffs. They are now promising even more of that, which the market liked and the

stock went up. Yeah, and Hollywood hates, I'll just interject. But it doesn't change the fundamentals of

this company. This company is primarily a television company that is being dragged down by the

declines in television, and they have not fully articulated how they are going to make up that money, other than to say that they have this magic formula of, you know, the Oracle style technology that is going to make streaming a priority and build that business and turn around the film studio and turn that into a much bigger moneymaker.

Yes, nobody quite knows what that technology piece is, and they did not say anything to

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