Hi, I'm Kim Masters. Thanks for listening to the business podcast. You know, KCRW produces another podcast

that you might want to check out. My frequent banter buddy, Michael Schneider, hosts it. It's called the

spin-off. It's about television, industry insights and trends and shows that we watch or shows that we

don't. Find the spinoff on KCRW's iTunes page.

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

People came to Berlin to see footage because I wasn't going to send footage before we were finished. I would take people's cell phones when we'd go into screenings because I wanted to make sure that what we released, we released it when we were ready to do that.

Filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras has been detained at the U.S. border and had her notebooks and electronics confiscated, so she took no chances while making Citizen 4 about Edward Snowden's historic leak of NSA documents.

But first on the news banter, the Sony hacking scandal casts a chill on the industry.

Stay tuned. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my partner in banter, Michael Schneider, of TV Guide magazine.

Hello, Mike.

Hi, Kim.

So the story of the hour continues to be Sony and the hack.

This has moved so quickly.

I have to tell you, just, it's kind of funny.

I was taping a TV, a news show last night.

I've been doing a lot of interviews, and I would say something into the microphone, and as I was talking, the situation would change.

And three or four times I had to state the latest iteration of the news and start from scratch, because first the theaters pulled the movie, when we're talking, of course, about the interview with a Seth Rogan James Franco movie. And then, you know, Sony pulled the movie and it just, it was like dominoes. Right, right. Once Sony told the theaters, you know what, it's, it's your discretion.

Then that was the moment where everyone decided it just wasn't worth it, both from a PR perspective,

but also from a safety perspective. But then from there, we were speculating maybe Sony could upload it on VOD and at least recoup some of their

costs, but then they came back and said they're not even going to do that. And perhaps that

has something to do as your publication reported with insurance. But now the question is,

...