January 19th, 2008 12:00am

The looming national recession will never be the top story on Plum TV. The cable network serving the most affluent segment of the population in storied resort towns is more likely to feature wine tastings, restaurant openings and art shows.

Plum TV is a network for the super-rich who spend leisure time in enclaves like Aspen and the Hamptons.

Quietly beaming a limited number of hours of live programming a week in high- end U.S. resort destinations, Plum TV doesn't have a huge audience, just a hugely lucrative one. Plum shows up on cable access channels in Aspen, Vail, Telluride, the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard, Miami Beach, Sun Valley and Nantucket.

Advertisers wanting to tap a specific niche (i.e. the top 1 percent of the population that certain politicians talk about) have taken notice.

Let's say you're the advertising and marketing director for a company called Flexjet and you need an efficient way to reach the uber-rich who might need your services to hop from their beach house in Martha's Vineyard to their ski chalet in Aspen in time for a fundraiser.

Flexjet is a fractional jet ownership company, selling to folks eager to buy private jet service to avoid airports and other nuisances of plebian life.

"They want an efficient way to reach the super-affluent," explains Chris Glowacki, one of the founders and president of Plum.

If you have to ask how much a share in a private jet costs, you probably can't afford it.

Similarly, if you haven't bumped into Plum TV, you probably aren't in the target audience.

"The average income and the net worth of the Plum watcher is many, many times the average of even the most affluent traditional cable networks," according to Glowacki, a veteran of NBC and CNBC. While cable TV networks boast that their viewers reside in households making $85,000 a year, "The Plum TV audience average is six or seven times that," Glowacki said.

In Plum terms, "affluent" means $125,000-$249,999 in discretionary household income. "Super-affluent" means $250,000-$499,999, while "wealthy" means more than $500,000. "Discretionary" means after the bills are paid. The average income of Plum TV viewers is $632,000 and the average net worth is $8.7 million, according to the Harrison Group, a Connecticut-based marketing/ consulting firm.

Blue-chip advertisers like Lexus, Bank of America and American Express have signed on.

"As a business model, we have targeted places and a certain set of people advertisers are looking for. However, from a television perspective we don't really think that way," Glowacki said. The daily fare includes a couple of hours of live programming, aprs ski programming, local features and light documentaries. "We don't try to be a news service but we do cover topics of interest." Features are cycled from one Plum market to another.

Stories on the Aspen Food and Wine Festival, Beaver Creek's snowshoe races, Vail's Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival and the Telluride Film Festival, for instance, are shared across the channels. Local cultural events, restaurant tips and celebrity sightings (Kate Hudson, Mariah Carey, Jack Nicholson and Heidi Klum in Aspen over the holidays!) are in the mix Ñ all with an upbeat promotional slant.

Vail's winter-only morning show, "Fresh Tracks," offers ski, weather and road conditions. Local business profiles and other sponsored tidbits deliver thinly disguised infomercials to the Vail Valley.

Launched in 2002 by Nantucket Nectars founder Tom Scott, Plum TV claims a potential national audience of 16.4 million people who visit the resort towns each year Ñ some for the weekend, some for the season. While the company endured layoffs in the past year, it has no intention of shutting down in any of its markets, Glowacki said.

If you're a Denver day-tripper skiing Vail, Plum isn't for you, although you might want to catch the snow reports before hitting the highway. Each of the Colorado resort outlets Ñ Channel 16 in Aspen and Vail, Channel 13 in Telluride Ñ has a website; Plum is also on Comcast video on demand in Denver.

"What attracted me to this concept initially was localism," Glowacki said. "These are very small towns, with a small-town feel, but many people feel a strong emotional attachment."

Full article available at: www.denverpost.com