Ken Kurson

Green talked to star, writer and co-creator Stack about the show, the TV business and money. A week or so after the interview, Green saw Stack at a party for the show’s second season. He introduced us to Stern and said, “They’re going to write a nice story about the show.” Stern said, “You’d better. He’ll track you down. With a physique like that, you better be worried.”

The premise of the show — gorgeous young people bouncing on a beach with you intentionally sticking your pasty white stomach out as far as it will go — is a brilliant platform for both satire and just plain fun.

When we set out to do the show, we wanted there to be nothing redeeming. If we ever did a “special episode,” it would be so embarrassing. That’s why we do those ridiculous public service announcements at the end of the episodes. The first show I loved was “Sea Hunt” with Lloyd Bridges, my earliest memories of television. He’d be at the back of the boat, he’d give a “Hey, kids, when you’re swimming …” water safety tip. I can’t drop a lot of names because my life is so shallow, but the one guy I know is Jeff Bridges, and he hit the floor when he saw the PSA portion of our show.

Do the “Baywatch” people like the show?

Apparently, David Hasselhoff loves it. He did some promos for us. We were trying to get him for the show, but the scheduling wasn’t good. He’s a big Stern fan. Ironically, when we first got going we got all these legal letters from the company that distributes “Baywatch.” And we were like, jeez, it’s satire. And then when they realized Hasselhoff was digging it, they stopped sending us letters.

It’d be easy to assume that your costars are only there for their considerable bodies, but I think all of them are surprisingly strong comic actors.

I really think BJ [Jamie Bergman] could be a star. Look at where Marilyn Monroe or Goldie Hawn came from: telling jokes in bathing suits. And Jamie will do anything. It’s like, “Great, let’s go.”

Are you rich from this show?

No one’s making any money on this. We’re all doing it because FX leaves us alone and lets us do what we want to do. So it’s a trade-off: You give up the money you’d make on a network for the freedom to do what you want to do. The production company that does our show is great, but we do this show for a third of what a network would spend. “Action,” which is running right after ours and was canceled after like six episodes, cost three times what we’d spend. I’d be making three times what I’m making if a network made “Son of the Beach.”

I ask every television person I interview how rich they are and they all cry poverty.

Yeah, I know. My wife is like, “Can I get that?” And I’m like, no, and she’s like, but you’re on a TV show. And I’m like, it’s on FX. We follow the “South Park” guys. They knew that creatively, if they stuck to their guns and developed their ideas in the creative cocoon of Comedy Central, it’d pay off for them. And it has.

How involved are you as a writer

I think of myself more as a writer-producer than an actor now. I guess because I’ve been doing it so long, my focus is on the writing even more than the acting. And my writing partners, Jim Stein and Dave Morganson, are in real good synch.

How about Howard Stern? Is he actively involved or just loaning his name and support?

What’s great about Howard is he doesn’t — it’s not like, can you get that lesbian to shave herself, but it’s way more like the network gives notes. Stuff like, “Let’s meet the villain before we see Notch.”

That sounds neat, but give me a juicier example. I want proof that he’s an example of a phrase I just learned, “parking-space producer.”

I have a great example for you, one of the smartest observations I’ve ever had from a producer. We’d come from writing “Night Stand” (Stack’s show on E! Entertainment Television), which was “Guest star, then Dick [the host] gets a joke,” over and over.

Howard saw the “Son of the Beach” scripts. In sitcoms, there’s always an A and a B story and Howard said, “You gotta take Notch OUT of the B story.”

We were apprehensive, we hadn’t even cast the show yet, and we were nervous whether the bombshells we knew we were going to hire could carry the acting without me in the scene. He said that if we can’t find people who can carry their weight we should just shut it down.

He turned out to be absolutely right. He’s read another script of mine — he made it a better script. He should give a tutorial to executives on how to give notes.

Howard hangs out at the set. He was in town a few weeks ago for vacation. We did the table reading; his daughters read a couple of the parts and he was here for the whole week on the set.

Whenever a show gets a laugh out of body-part humor, it’s tempting to imagine deeper layers at work, so you feel less guilty. But your show really does have underpinnings beyond the puns.

Well, take stuff like Leila Arcieri’s character, Jamaica St. Croix. She is both playing and satirizing the hip-hop lingo. (Jamaica became a lifeguard as a tribute to her brother, who was killed in a swim-by shooting.) And then there’s the writers, showing our age, like a reference to “Would You Like to Swing on a Star” by Bing Crosby.

How has your plan to utilize the “South Park” creative petri dish model worked out so far?

What’s been happening is we’re getting all these offers to write features. Executives see a funny show — even like “Road Trip,” which made a lot of money and wasn’t a great movie — and they realize our ability to write for a younger audience and do those “Animal House” jokes. As far as mainstream television, I’d love to get into it, but they pass on us all the time. They can’t see what’s not there. That was the great thing about Brandon Tartikoff: He’d try to find something completely different from what was working on other networks. Everything was “Friends,” then everything was “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” I’m pontificating. The same way “Seinfeld” got all these New Yorkers-in-an-apartment romance sitcoms going. Tartikoff would see Mr. T and go, “He could be a TV star.” He saw MTV and said, “Let’s do music video with cops” and there you had “Miami Vice.”

Let’s hear your Genesis myth.

I made my home at the Groundlings. Pee Wee Herman, Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz, really terrific people. Lisa Kudrow. A breeding ground for “Saturday Night Live.” Phil and I were great friends up until the end. Lovitz I talk to all the time. We lived in the same apartment building way back when. When he got his first role, he literally threw up over the balcony.

So how’s the show doing?

Well, it’s the most work I’ve ever done. It’s really hard. And our numbers would be way higher if we were on in Manhattan. [Sadly, FX is not offered on the Time Warner cable system in New York.] That’s where buzz starts.

I think the show has at least some buzz because you seem to be landing ever more impressive guest stars.

Mark Hamill will be guest star in an upcoming episode. He plays an evil cult leader called Divine Rod, and BJ gets involved with him. Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy from “The Sopranos”) is on another show playing “Vinnie Fallacio.”

There should be an Emmy for character names. Do you invest?

I have a retirement account. My brother worked for Yahoo, so I bought a bunch of that early on. I live a great life — Santa Barbara [Calif.], wife and two kids. But you think you have a television show and you’re rich.

“Son of the Beach” is running its second season of brand-new episodes every Tuesday at 10 p.m. EDT on FX. This week, check out Notch Johnson protecting a stalked celeb in “A Star Is Boned.”

We’re 15 years into the strongest bull market this country’s ever known. What took so long for a show to materialize?

I’ve been pitching this idea since 1990. ‘What about a show about Wall Street?’ I’d say to anyone who liked my ["Law & Order"] episodes enough to approach about developing my own show. ‘No one cares about Wall Street,’ they’d say, even as the country increasingly obsessed over their investments. Finally, somebody listened. TNT decided Wall Street is interesting. We premiere on Tuesday, August 15.

TNT is kind of a strange choice — I think of them as Goldberg and Clint Eastwood movies.

Their original marching orders were ‘Let’s do something you can’t do on national broadcast television.’ We don’t have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. These characters are flawed people. They have ambitions other than what you see on television. We’re their first original series. Their forte is marketing, and I think they are committed to this show’s success.

You were a lawyer before you split for Hollywood to try to make it as a writer. What’s the attraction of Wall Street as a subject?

Calvin Coolidge said the business of America is business. Honestly, how often do Americans have contact with a policeman? Or a lawyer? Twice — when they write a will and buy a house. Donald Trump and the guys on “Squawk Box” are celebrities.

You wrote the “Law & Order” episode where a Joseph Jett kind of character kills his boss and attributes the act to black rage, so Wall Street was already on your mind as a dramatic venue.

One of the characters in “Bull” is played by Malik Yoba (“New York Undercover”) — his character has never suffered any discrimination at all and all of a sudden on Wall Street he’s feeling it. This is America’s pastime. Where it used to be a cabby’s [reading] the New York Post, now it’s equally often Barron’s. We’ve done an episode about the dangers of day trading and this stuff is riveting. We’ll draw from real life, and we have a lot more character stuff. The basic premise is five or six young Turks at a big firm split off to start their own firm. Business, per se, may not be interesting to everybody. It’s the personalities of business.

Most of the lawyers I’ve known are very detail-oriented, not risk-takers. What did it take to drop that and move to Los Angeles to pursue a dicey career trajectory?

I was at a big firm [Proskauer Rose] and just like in my show, four of us split off. After a while, I was scared. My graduate degree was in English. All of a sudden, my friends were graduating from law school and medical school and business school, and I could see myself drafting briefs for 50 years. I packed my bags and moved to Hollywood. I was 34 or 35. I landed May 2, 1990, and 30 days later I got my first job — on “Law & Order.” Dick Wolf. I love him. Dick is Dick. He’s a mogul. I owe him a lot. First day of shooting “Bull,” I got a nice bottle of champagne from him. I always say Dick pulled me out of the gutter.

You must have been making a lot of money …

I don’t want to talk numbers. I was a partner in a law firm. I had to pay a lot to get out of the lease. I came out here with nothing but my golf bag. That’s what the show is about. These young kids want to do it on their own — there’s something inside each one of them. America’s not about Mom, it’s not about apple pie, it’s about ownership.

I noticed that most of the crew is sitting on chairs that say “Law & Order.”

See, that’s what I mean. Dick’s show is on hiatus and he’s letting us use some of his stuff and people.

But wasn’t he upset when you left “Law & Order?”

I wrote a ton of episodes. I did the first six years, killed off Jill Hennessy and then it was time to go.

Your favorite?

One of them would be “Discord,” where a rock star (Clarence ‘C Square’ Carmichael, mesmerizingly portrayed by Sebastian Roche) rapes a college student but claims it was consensual sex. [Breaks into song he wrote for the episode]: ‘You ain’t a lady, you my bitch.’

So what’s your investing history like?

Back when I was a lawyer, I played a lot. Margin in way over my head. I learned my lesson in 1987 with a bunch of margin calls. Now I let a professional do it. My whole focus is getting this show going and on the air. I haven’t played at all. I wish someone would come and give me a hot tip.

Apparently, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek was doing his best to ingratiate himself with Oliver Platt and the people doing Dick Wolf’s new show “Deadline” — he generously offered to weigh in on whether the scenes rang true to actual newsrooms.

We have professional investors to bounce stuff off of now, but on the pilot I didn’t. The pros said, ‘Who helped you on that?’ I have a writing staff now, but I wrote the first three or four [scripts]. Then I redo or rework — everything ultimately goes through MY computer. No one’s complained to me yet.

What’s next?

I have a movie with Kevin Costner — he hired me to write it and we’ll see what happens. But right now the focus is “Bull.”

So what do you think now that it’s real? We’re here in Central Park and even your executive producer looks pleased.

I look at the cuts of the first couple of shows and I’m proud of what we did. Television is a crapshoot — who’s up against you, time slot, etc. The best stuff doesn’t always turn into a hit. But this I’m very, very proud of. I read that 50 percent of all Americans own stock — phenomenal, incredible. It gives them an interest and that’s why I think the show has a shot.

These days, the good judge is going to bat for — what else — a dot com. im-ur.com wants to be the reader-written daily newspaper of the Web. In a kind of journalism popularity contest, well-read essays on tons of subjects automatically migrate to better positioning on the site. Wapner’s involvement is no stranger a fit than, say, Priceline and William Shatner, and the judge’s son is pals with the founder of im-ur, so it makes some sense. Wapner also referees on “Judge Wapner’s Animal Court” on the Animal Planet channel. We recently spoke to the judge about money and his excellent career.

Judge Wapner, one of my favorite cases from “The People’s Court” was when after the trial, you spoke to some law students and one of them pointed out a logical error he thought you made. You said, ‘That’s a good point. I may have been wrong; I’ve been wrong before.’

That was at the University of Southern California, my alma mater — we did a one-hour special. Well, sure, maybe I got it wrong. A judge is not a god or a king. He has the last word most of the time, but sometimes one makes mistakes. In the municipal small claims court in California, the defendant can appeal, but not the plaintiff.

So what’s with im-ur? The best-read stories move up in prominence?

That’s my understanding of it. It’s going to be opinions expressed and answers to those opinions. And controversy. Asking questions and getting feedback. I’m not running it. I have to leave that to the professionals. If I were in court and they tried to tell me how to run my court, I’d tell them to go fly a kite. They’re using me as a spokesperson for a site, but they’re still running it.

You were in private practice before being appointed judge. Don’t most judges do at least some time in the public sector first?

It depends on the governor. Pat Brown, who appointed me, wanted mostly people who had experience he thought was relevant. He was a very, very fine man, and a very fine governor, not just because he appointed me. An outstanding man. Former Gov. George Deukmejian, on the other hand, appointed an awful lot of prosecutors — including my son Fred. He was appointed to the municipal court by Deukmejian, then ran without opposition to superior court. In fact, he returned all his unused funds to contributors.

Weren’t you the original judge in the Manson trial?

No. But Rusty Burrell, my bailiff for all these years, was the bailiff in that case. [Burrell was also the bailiff in the Onion Field murder case and the Patty Hearst/SLA trial.] I was presiding judge over the entire court in Los Angeles County, but not THE judge of that case. The presiding judge is elected by fellow judges. He doesn’t try cases, there’s too much administrative work. I did that from 1969 through 1971.

Were you the sitting judge on any significant cases?

A case involving three defendants, in which each made implicating statements against the others. The defendants wanted the statements excluded or to try the cases separately. I knew that was probably correct, but it was still an unresolved area of law, so I suggested they just delete certain things from the statements and go ahead and try it. The defendants wouldn’t have it and I was reversed on appeal. It’s a famous case and the judge who reversed me said Judge Wapner had the prescience to know this needed to be settled.

Alan Dershowitz was asked if it was a shame that more people knew Judge Wapner than the chief justice of the United States, and he said that’s because Wapner’s a better judge.

Alan Dershowitz turned out to be a friend of mine. He was a weekend speaker at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute [a Jewish cultural center in Los Angeles]. I was president of that for six years.

Let’s talk money. You’ve probably earned a bundle over the years. What’d you do with it?

I use two people to help invest it. My CPA, who was also a lawyer, Dick DeFranzo and Harold Friedman at PaineWebber. Most of my investments were in tax-free municipal bonds and Ginnie Mae — very, very conservative stuff. To be honest with you, I got on the bench very early, just before I was 40, so I hadn’t been making a lot of money. When I started doing well with television, I wanted to continue to invest very conservatively. I own two stocks, American Home Products (NYSE: AHP) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), and I don’t own much of that.

There’s a great Jewish joke about Pfizer, but I’m embarrassed to tell you.

I insist.

The goyish man comes home from work the day the FDA approves Viagra. His wife says, “buy Viagra, buy Viagra.” The Jewish man comes home and his wife says, “buy Pfizer, buy Pfizer.”

Good one.

So you must have made a fortune with “The People’s Court” — shows rarely run more than 10 years. Did you stick with the same advisers?

They’re still with me. These people are really unique. They know their business and they know what I want. As for my earnings, I did make more, but I made it a policy never to discuss how much I make on television. It’s none of anybody’s business. Obviously, I made more than I did as a sitting judge. But how much more, you’ll never know.

What do you think about the current crop of television judges?

I don’t like to judge the other judges. Judges are supposed to have “judicial temperament.” You have to have respect for the people who appear before you as you would have them respect you. When I see the judges act in a way that’s improper, it bothers me. The public should not have that impression. You don’t tell a litigant to shut up and sit down. You say, ‘Sir, I will not tolerate that kind of conduct in my courtroom.’ You don’t want to take on the aura of the litigant or lawyer who’s acting that way. But there are certain ways to talk to people. We’re trained to act in a certain way.

But judges are human …

Ballplayers are human too, but a lot of them were just fined and suspended for going into the Wrigley Field stands after the fans. Irrespective of whether they were right or wrong, they’re trained not to do that.

Do you think the current shows copied your formula?

There’s no question about it. Without bragging, it was a huge success. We were on for 12 years. The people who did “Judge Judy” were on “People’s Court.”

Why are so many of these cases really about money?

They’re ALL about money. That’s all small claims can do. Well, you can have reformation of a contract, but mostly they’re about money. People say ‘I’m only suing for the principle of the thing,’ and I reply that I can’t give you principle — only money.

You’re on Animal Planet now. It drives me crazy as an animal lover and pet owner that people with pets that have been harmed can only sue for what the pet would cost. What about emotional distress and stuff?

There’s no such thing as sentimental value. That’s unfortunate but that’s what the law has evolved. Animals are viewed as personal property.

The thing I really enjoyed about watching you was that you seemed to honor your profession so much. You just seemed to really respect the duty of being a judge.

I loved being a judge. I liked being in control and making decisions. I enjoyed that and always wanted to be a judge. Those were the happiest days of my career. And “The People’s Court” I really enjoyed. I only shot the cases one day a week — 10 cases in one day and then was free to do whatever else I wanted to do.

The show’s got an intrusive laugh track, and the jumping back to stylized clips from Titus’ one-man show can be distracting. But there’s plenty to like here: fun writing (“bag of ass cracks” is one brotherly insult), a brilliant Stacy Keach (as the drunken father figure he perfected in “Fat City” and a dozen times since) and the unrelenting, decidedly nonheartwarming picture of dysfunctional family life.

We reached Titus in New Orleans, where he was drumming up support for the show by entertaining Fox affiliates.

Chris Titus: Kurson! Let’s go!

I can’t call anyone who hasn’t beaten me up yet by his last name. What’d you make for your first gig as a comedian?

My first paid gig, I got $50 for eight shows — at the Last Laugh in San Jose, now defunct. They’d use their open-mike guys for five minutes. I was the pre-opening act. I had to introduce everybody, and you’d be there from “Hello, everyone!” to “Thanks, that’s our show.”

Ouch.

I got moved up to $150 a show. I was that guy “Hey, you ever notice when you go to the store and buy something …” I was growing this tumor on my soul. I’d written this bit about my mom in a mental hospital. My agent, Bruce, said, “What are you doing? You’re talking about it like Tim Allen, ‘Anyone got a mother in a mental hospital?’” So I wrote comedy about our desire to kill and stuff like that. I wrote it to show Bruce it wouldn’t work. But the audience loved it. The audience knows when you’re lying.

But you must be making plenty with your show.

People think you make a lot, but we’ve only done nine shows. I was just barely breaking into six figures in stand-up. Last year, with the show, I might have done three or four times that. I still live in a tract house in Canoga Park [Calif.], but now I have automatic sprinklers.

Is your real family screwed up enough to produce material for a long-running show?

I have four to five years of episodes. And we hired a very screwed-up writing staff.

Do you invest your own money?

I have some great friends in Chicago; they take care of it. I’d buy hot rod after hot rod after hot rod. My wife makes sure that if everything goes to crap I won’t be back to eight shows for $50.

Do you feel like you’ve “made it”?

This sounds so clichid, but if you just commit to excellence all the time, money will follow. For me, success came from buying my dad a car. I think there are milestones. A million would be a milestone. Five million. Ten starts to be a private jet. It said in Rolling Stone that Bill Gates’ partner [Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen] is worth $33 billion. This is not a race you can win. The question is, What are they going to say about you in 20 years?

But some stocks have caught your eye, right?

I’ve made an effort to look for companies that are 10-year stocks. Global Crossing, for example [NASDAQ: GBLX]. I bought at 44 and it dropped to 28; they’re not quite hooked up yet, but they will be. [Note: A few weeks after this interview was conducted, Citizens Communications [NYSE: CZN] paid $3.65 billion for Global’s local phone business, which sent Global’s price up to the mid-30s.] There are tech-stock values now. I’ve started following it, but I don’t have time to hit it every day and say, “Oh my, I lost 8 bucks.”

Hack question: Which comedians do you most admire?

Richard Pryor, because he translated to film well and always told the truth. Chris Rock gives you that crystal-clear uncomfortableness. That’s what we are supposed to do. Mort Sahl. Bill Hicks. I wasn’t a fan until he got to his heroin years. You watch Andy Kindler and you’re wiping tears from your eyes. Andy does five minutes on table tent appetizers. At the end of it, I’m laughing so hard and people are like, “Why is he talking about that?” It’s enough that it’s funny.

Your show’s doing well and everyone at Fox seems surprised.

We had a 20 share for 18-to-34s. It scares me. And I’m not a parking space executive producer. I’m there all the time. I act from 8 to 2, and from 2 to 10, I’m in the writers room. No one had any hopes — they moved the pilot to the second episode because the test group said it wouldn’t play. Well, my testing group kicks their testing group’s ass. They were scared of the show. My testing group is 300 people a night for 16 years, six nights a week, two shows Friday and Saturday.

Sandy Grushow was president of 20th Century Fox, which produces our show. Then he was made president of the network, so it’s like the dad making his son the Little League pitcher. People were like, “This will fail for the same reason ‘Action’ didn’t hit. This is gonna die in three.” I think television kisses its own ass a lot. People in this biz can see a hit.

The one thing I’m good at is being honest — if I suck, I know I suck. You have that big a snowball of money rolling down a hill, it’s hard to tell when you suck.

Do you have other projects brewing?

I had a meeting with a movie studio. I pitched three movies and there’s one they want to see rewritten.

What are you doing in Louisiana?

I’m in New Orleans; I did a song, a slow blues. I’m going to all the affiliates in the top 50, to get them on my side. I’ll do anything. Hump the floor. I’ve seen a lot of comics get their show on the air and then stop doing the promotion. Andy Kindler would be great in a show. There are certain guys who should have shows. Television will take a comic who has a point of view and put him in an isolation booth, let writers write the whole thing and then wonder why it doesn’t feel right.

For this show, we hired two excellent writers — Jack Kenny and Brian Hargrove. They’ve got 120 episodes of television under their belts. I’ll throw out an idea and they’ll fight me, but they know the structure, and I’ve never been so creatively hard-wired to two people in my life.

You seem to have a core of people who’ve stuck together for a while.

Guys who get some fame and cut their wife loose, fire their agent … Why would I cut these people loose now? It cracks me up to see some comics get some fame. My agent Bruce from Omnipop would be there with a notepad at some open-mike night on a Tuesday, and say, “Do this, don’t do that.” Everyone wants to think it’s all them. We’re the most egomaniacal guys — we write, perform, etc. After my career started happening, guys would approach me. Some guy from ICM walked over and gave me his card. I walked over to Bruce and gave him the card to give back to the ICM guy. Why would you cut them loose for [Michael] Ovitz, or these predators who weren’t there when you needed them?

Do you get paid for these appearances at the affiliates?

I don’t get paid for the appearances, but they fly me first class; I’ve got a five-room suite and I’m picked up in limos.

How do development deals work?

Some exec sees you in a comedy club, says, “Wow, you’re great, we’re gonna develop a show around you.” Some people get like $750,000. My first deal was somewhere around $100,000. You can go through that really fast — 16 years of comedy club debt. The idea is that if you do well, you’ll be recognized. Fox told me this is a small deal, but “in success, Titus, we’ll make this right.” I said fine. We did the pilot, got picked up, people going nuts for it. We did a 20 share, an 18, a 19, and they weren’t rushing to make it right.

If it stayed that way, I wouldn’t have done any promo. I can always go back and do comedy. Money is a current to me; it’s not an end. If I’m not being paid what I’m worth, fuck it, I’ll walk away. Would I have wanted to? No. But I would. We took the last of our savings and did “Norman Rockwell” in a theater that we rented; we gave away tickets. My wife is amazing. Luckily, 20th Century Fox stood up to their word; they said, “We did say that,” and I said all I want is a fair development deal.

Have you had some interesting jobs?

I was head grill man at a McDonald’s, then gas pump guy. I was Darth Vader for kids parties at ice-cream parlors. They’d spent, like, $80 for the helmet but built the chest guard out of, like, blender parts. Darth Vader scares the crap out of kids — 17 kids scream, and there’s always one kid hitting you on the head screaming, “You’re not Darth Vader!”

Here’s a cool story.

CP Shades — they make cool clothing. I became warehouse supervisor. All of a sudden, I start getting comedy gigs. I come back from Caesars in Tahoe. My boss says, “I have to fire you.” “No, no, no, I need this job.” “Why don’t you let me fire you — then you’ll get six months’ pay and can make the transition to professional comedian.” Later, I tried to track him down to thank him. David, he owned CP Shades.

Today’s personal finance magazines rely on a concept that’s become outdated in recent years, due mostly to the medium through which you’re reading this now. The bread and butter of these magazines is their ability to provide timely advice to do-it-yourself investors. But these same do-it-yourselfers have discovered the stock market’s dirty little secret: he who knows first makes money. Mostly by selling stocks to he who knows second. That’s the guy who gets his personal finance magazine in the mail 4 weeks — a lifetime by investing standards — after the insights within were first revealed.

As readers get wise to the serious financial consequences of this lag, the magazines are striving to alleviate it. By providing more timely information? No. The US Mail is what it is and it’s tough to speed up the editorial, design and manufacturing requirements of a glossy paper magazine. Are they rushing to take advantage of the Internet to provide readers with instantaneous updates on recommended strategies? No. Only two of the four have web sites and neither comes close to the quality of many financial web sites that don’t have the benefit of large staffs and story-generating machinery.

So what drastic step are all four PF mags taking to keep their information timely and relevant? They’re putting the word “Now” on the cover:
Best Mutual Funds to Buy Now
Top Yields Now
Bargain Stocks to Buy Now
Four Best Health Care Stocks Right Now
Best Short-term Investments Right Now
Six Best Places to Put Your Money Now
Experts tell where to Put Your Money Now (this “now” was even in italics)

All of these headlines appeared on the covers of personal finance magazines this year. Imagine the focus group meeting. A collection of editors behind one-way mirrors. The selected readers keep saying, “I need information that I can use now.” “We’ll give ‘em what they want,” nod the editors. So they add the word, but not its meaning.

And then there’s the need to attach arbitrary numbers to cover stories.
7 Great small stocks
34 First-Rate Financial Websites
8 Steps to a Great Car-Lease
14 Best Car Buys
5 Technology Stocks Set to Bounce Back
7 Best New Mutual Funds
6 Stocks They Like

The greasy fingerprints of marketing consultants are everywhere. “Your readers need a number to connect to a story. ‘First-Rate Financial Web Sites’ just sits there like a turd on a Parisian boulevard. But ’34 First-Rate Financial Websites’ — now there’s a story.” And using the numeral instead of spelling it out — now there’s a design idea. (To Worth’s credit, “now” appears on none of its ’96 covers, and it’s also less guilty on the numeral business. But lest you think I’m favoring the company that signs my paycheck, Worth is guilty of “Best Blue-Chip Stocks to Own Today,” which is almost as bad.)

The personal finance press should give up the ghost on timeliness and turn its attention to the big-picture stories it has always done better than any other source — long-term investment strategies, investigations into corporate hijinks, deep explanations of the world of money and its mechanics — the magazines that do these stories well will survive to see the year 2000.

Meantime, I’m rethinking Green’s covers of late. I wonder if we’d be profitable and packed with ads by now if we’d changed our cover stories just a tad.
I Know Jack About Investing Right Now
Homesteading on Avenue B Is As Now As it Gets
How to Do Stuff 4 Times

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em — now.