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

I could have lived without that line. The episode would have lived without that line.

But I knew that if I lost that, the next silly battle would be easier to lose.

Television icon Norman Lear wrote sitcoms that tackled real issues, like rape, abortion, and race relations.

When the network wanted him to drop a controversial line, he just said no.

The 92-year-old Lear talks about a few lifetimes worth of adventures in film and TV, and his new memoir.

Even this I get to experience.

But first on the news banter, everyone in Hollywood wants some face time with the richest man in China.

Stay tuned, it's the business from KCRW.

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

Hello, Kim. So Michael, the last week of October, quite recently, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, which is the Amazon of China, and he is said to be the richest man in China. And that means really rich.

I assume that that's a high bar.

He came out to L.A. and appeared at a conference that the Wall Street Journal put on and then had some meetings with studio executives.

And his team was also here in town.

They are going to open up an office here.

And Hollywood is starting to, like,

drool in a visible way. Well, they see dollar signs. Yes. And Kim, you actually wrote a really

interesting piece in The Hollywood Reporter, where you even dangled some interesting tidbits,

such as the idea that down the road, you know, he may be potentially looking at a studio to

purchase. Yeah, well, what we've seen here is that Hollywood, especially on the film side, their

executives have made this trek to China again and again banging their heads against the

great wall because there was so much money to be had, both in terms of Chinese box office

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