From KCRW in Santa Monica, I'm Claude Brodesser Ackner, and this is The Business.

So you still want to do the show business, and you think that you got what it takes.

I mean, you really got a rap and be all at, but compare yourself for the brakes. Check it out.

This week on the business, the directors seem to have made a deal with the studios.

Will the writers follow suit? Should they?

We're alive today with four-time Emmy-winning writer-producer David Milch

and Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis

to answer these questions and more.

But first, what exactly did the Directors Guild agree to?

Joe Adalian is one of the reporters covering the strike for a variety.

Hey, Joe, how you doing?

I'm fine, CBA. Good to talk to you.

Good to talk to you, too. How you been?

I've been doing fine.

You guys have been working pretty hard, I think.

It has been a crazy couple of days.

You know, the strike's been going on for 10 weeks.

For 11 weeks, it feels like about five months. We're over in war mode here, still at variety.

So in the simplest English possible, give us the executive summary of the director's tentative deal with the producers so that my mom would understand this.

Well, all, all right.

You know, first of all, depending upon who you ask this could be a really great deal for the directors and potentially the writers. If you believe John Wells, the guy who exec produces ER and used to run the Writers Guild as the president,

he called it a genuinely landmark deal that he says it's the best deal that anyone in show

...