Hamptons - TV viewing for the rich and richer

SIMON HOUPT

The summer may be over, but out in the Hamptons the time is right for picking up a vacation property before next year's crush. If you're interested, there's a lovely little four bedroom / four bath out in Watermill that can be yours for only $6-million or so. I know this because I've been watching Plum TV, where the Watermill spread was the featured property at an end-of-season real-estate wrap-up last week.
Well, that's only half true: I've been watching Plum online, not on TV. That's because Plum is a fledgling network that is broadcast only in the Hamptons and seven other locales that are popular with the country's financial elite: Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Vail, Aspen, Telluride, Sun Valley and Miami Beach. Even though Plum's corporate headquarters are in the East Village, if I want a fix of its programming here in New York, I have to get it online.
But then, I'm not exactly the network's target demographic.
Launched a few years ago with its first broadcasting operation in Nantucket, the network is an example of what TV executives call narrowcasting: identifying a valuable niche market, and targeting it with extreme ardour. Plum says it targets the 14.2-million people (about 5 per cent of the U.S. population) who travel through its eight markets during the vacation seasons. But its real interest is even narrower: the three million Americans in the top percentile of net worth.


Plum says it has research to suggest 57 per cent of the people in its markets - those with an average household income of $600,000, and an average net worth of $7-million - watch an average of 3.6 hours of the network every week they're in town.
If so, my estimation of rich people has just plummeted. Want to know what grabs the attention of masters of the universe? Locally-oriented programming that is almost embarrassingly lo-fi in its execution and unchallenging in its content. The network's flagship broadcast, The Morning-Noon&Night Show, is a two-to-three-hour block of cable access-style talk that airs in the morning (and then, per its name, repeats at least twice more during the day). The hosts are folksy and unpolished, the guests a mix of the famous and notorious who happen to vacation in the area.
The former NBC chairman Bob Wright might drop by the Nantucket broadcast to talk about the charity work he's doing (and then in another edition take a turn as a guest host, interviewing his friend Gordon Gund, the former owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Jose Sharks, and his wife Lulie, about their conservation efforts on the island. The interview runs for only 12 minutes, but it feels like it lasts a whole summer). Norman Pearlstein, the former editor-in-chief of Time Inc., promoted a book on the Hamptons broadcast.
The show Beyond Politics taped a casual conversation over pizza with the controversial Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And the reality show Bob Builds His Dream House followed the actor Bob Balaban as he tried to get a vacation home built in Bridgehampton.
"Our viewers represent a demographic that advertisers really want to get a hold of, and they're also our content," says Graham Veysey, a network spokesman. "They can turn on the TV and see their friend, or they can see somebody they recognize, and we're doing it in a casual enough tone that you feel like you're hanging out with these people while they're talking about business or politics or a philanthropic organization they're passionate about."
And the guests surely know they're not going to face any genuine debate. Last month Judith Miller, the controversial former New York Times journalist whose reporting on Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction may have been used to help build support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, swung by for an interview in the Hamptons. (She has a home in Sag Harbor.) The host began the show by joking, "In a minute, I'm going to ask her the big question, which is: Did she single-handedly lead America into the Iraq war?" Off-camera, you could hear the appreciative, relaxed laughter of Miller and a couple of production assistants.
Plum prides itself on its ability to create a seamless local experience for viewers that ensures the outside world will never intrude on their vacation reveries. Part of the strategy is airing ads for national brands that are tailored to the local communities. "When somebody goes out to Aspen and has that second home they're completely infatuated with, or they're spending an enormous amount of money to get the most out of their two weeks there, they want to stay in Aspen, or Sun Valley, or the Miami Beach mindset," says Veysey. "When we go to commercial break, you're not going to leave that Aspen experience and therefore you're going to be more receptive to that marketer's message."
One program segment on the website features a spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons discussing "non-invasive rejuvenation" (i.e. Botox). Another highlights Houses of the Hamptons, an illustrated book with gorgeous archival photos of the East End's Gatsby-era mansions. My favourite, though, is probably the segment with Chris Rimmer, from the company Ocean Independence, who swung by to talk about how yachts seem to be getting bigger these days. (True, the deputy managing editor of CNNMoney.com, Jim Ledbetter, appeared in one segment to talk about his new book, a collection of the journalism of Karl Marx. But he and the host somehow managed to avoid talking about communism.)
Plum claims top-shelf advertisers that include Porsche, American Express, and the fractional jet services Netjets and FlexJet. Still, the company refuses to say whether it is profitable, which doesn't sound very promising. It had better not tell its viewers: they hate anything that reeks of failure.
shoupt@globeandmail.com