DIY Wife - a milestone FIRST

When I joined Dabl, a startup streaming network under Paramount, we had a structural problem.

More than 50 shows rotated on air. Every single one was a third-party acquisition. That meant layers of approvals, digital restrictions, and limited flexibility to promote content aggressively across streaming and social.

We needed something original. But in a post-COVID, cost-conscious environment, greenlighting a brand-new production simply was not realistic.

So we reframed the question.

Instead of asking, “How do we fund a new show?” we asked, “What already exists that we can elevate?”

Working closely with a forward-thinking executive partner, I helped pioneer a new model: acquire a digital-native creator with an existing library and up-cycle the content for broadcast.

That show was DIY Wife.

As lead producer on the project, I built the entire broadcast framework from scratch. I structured episodic arcs from short-form digital clips, wrote connective scripts to create narrative continuity, and developed title cards, transitions, and end credits that met broadcast standards. What started as digital content became a fully packaged television series ready for Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

The show debuted in Q4 2023.

The pilot outperformed the prior week’s program by more than 25 percent in tune-in and ratings. Just as importantly, it gave our sales team a fresh, promotable property to bring to advertisers.

The bigger win was strategic: we proved that digital-to-broadcast is not a compromise. It is a scalable acquisition model.

That precedent continues to influence how the broader Paramount team evaluates creator partnerships and cost-efficient original programming.