From KCRW in Santa Monica and KCRW.com, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

This week on the business, we talked to Fox Reality Tsar Mike Darnell about changes to American Idol.

What's it like to tweak the number one show on television when so many

fortunes depend on it? But first, it's Hollywood news banter. Stay close, it's the business

from KCRW. I'm joined in the studio by the business producer Matt Halsman.

What's the top of the news?

Let's talk about Monsters versus Aliens, a big 3D movie that opens this weekend.

Big 3D, but not as big as they thought because they're just not enough 3D screens.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, fell a little short.

He does not have 5,000 screens. He has fewer than 2000. And that $5 premium he wanted to charge, the theaters wouldn't go along.

Now, you broke a story in The Daily Beast that they're going to subsidize the cost of those 3D tickets.

Yes, Bank of America, in these troubled times, it turns out, has a sort of a stealth promotion, not a very heavily promoted promotion at this point, where they will give you a coupon to pay the premium, the extra charge that you would have to pay to go and see this movie because it's in 3D.

Okay, well, it's a stealth promotion now because banks are trying to lay so low, but maybe when they signed the deal six months ago, it was supposed to be a really big deal.

Who knows when the deal was signed?

It seems to be a little radioactive right now.

I called Bank of America, and they said, well, it's a perfectly reasonable promotion of our business,

and we want to reach families.

However, there's the awkward fact that one of the top DreamWorks executives,

the chairman of DreamWorks Animation, is formerly a top executive at Bank of America.

So it looks a little like Katzenberg said, oh, my God, they're not going for this premium price.

Hey, my friend over at Bank of America, help us out and do something.

I don't know if it was quite that way because I would assume this deal was in place some time ago before he found out that the theaters wouldn't pay the premium. I think maybe what happened is they had a deal set up

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