Kim Masters on The Business

Kim Masters writes for industry standard The Hollywood Reporter and is also host of the highly respected podcast and radio show The Business on KCRW.

The disarmingly pleasant but professional journalist was named Entertainment Reporter of the Year at the Los Angeles Press Club in 2011 and already is a favorite broadcaster to many of fxguide’s readers. But we rarely hear her opinions. Each week Masters reports behind the gossip, trivia and hype to illuminate the business issues of Hollywood in lengthy one-on-one interviews. If you listen to her show, you will also know she herself is incredibly well informed and insightful. We wanted to turn the podcast table around and hear her views, her opinions and better understand what it takes to do the outstanding work she and producer Darby Maloney broadcast each week.

KCRW: The Business

Kim Masters is a serious print journalist, formally trained with an impressive set of by-lines, but she is also a very successful broadcaster. First with NPR, and now on 89.9 MHz FM at a public radio station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California. At KCRW, Kim Masters hosts the highly successful radio show and podcast The Business. As one of the most intelligent and well informed media journalists in the country, Masters broadcasts weekly to KCRW’s some half a million regular radio listeners in LA, NY and elsewhere around the world. People listen to her in places as far away as Berlin, but many more listen to the show online via podcast from either the KCRW web site or iTunes.

The Hollywood Reporter

Kim Masters is also editor-at-large of The Hollywood Reporter. She previously has written for Vanity Fair and Time and also was a reporter at the Washington Post.

The Hollywood Reporter was rescued from falling subscriptions and possible closure by a radical make-over engineered by editorial director, Janice Min. One of Min’s first hires at the new look Hollywood Reporter was the well-known Ms Masters.

Min, who edited celebrity magazine Us Weekly from 2003 until 2009, oversaw the transformation of The Hollywood Reporter from a weekday trade paper into a slick weekly magazine “in a ridiculously short amount of time,” points our Masters. Min added much more video, interactive coverage and ‘show biz’ to the trade magazine. Masters herself points out in our interview that many people thought The Hollywood Reporter would not survive, but today it has a very strong online and print presence and, according to Wikipedia, has a staff estimated to be 150 with key bureaus around the world.

Long listener himself, Mike Seymour, met up with Kim Masters in LA at the offices of The Hollywood Reporter for this exclusive interview.