LXTV Co-Founders Acquire Plum TV

Joseph Varet, Morgan Hertzan will be co-presidents of network targeting affluent markets and focused on home, food, travel, wellness

LXTV co-founders Joseph Varet and Morgan Hertzan today announced an agreement to purchase Plum TV and serve as co-presidents of the lifestyle network targeting affluent markets and focused on home, food, travel, and wellness.

The purchase of Plum, founded in 2004, comes after a bankruptcy auction in the Southern District of New York. Hertzan will be based in New York and Varet in Los Angeles.

Plum TV will be a national network, expanding distribution across the country through television as well as digital media. It is now distributed on cable systems in such affluent locales as Miami, Aspen, Vail, Telluride, the Hamptons, Sun Valley, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard.

The non-affluent can also watch it — sigh, if they must — at PlumTV.com and on Plum TV’s iPhone app.

"We’re thrilled to get started on our next venture,"  Hertzan said.

Varet said Plum TV will expand "as a national lifestyle network while retaining its resort community programming and DNA."

Creative Artists Agency advised Hertzan and Varet on the transaction and will remain as advisors.

Former MTV executives Hertzan and Varet co-founded LXTV, which produces and distributes lifestyle entertainment, in 2006. NBCUniversal's NBC-owned TV stations division acquired it in 2008. LXTV was acquired in January 2008 by the NBC-owned TV stations division of NBCUniversal.

Hertaz, who conceived, launched and managed mtvU, joined NBCU with the sale as general manager of LXTV. He was also responsible for developing new programming and distribution, like videos shown in the back of New York taxi cabs.

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