Lion TV: 70+ Hours to Deliver, Six Months to Do It, Zero Room to Hire
Case Study
When I got the call from Lion TV in June 2022, here’s what they told me:
“We have over 70 hours of unscripted TV to deliver before the end of the year. The team’s buried. There’s no headcount. We can’t keep up.”
I stepped in as a post ops architect—knowing that, in a normal shop, this assignment would have required at least two more post sups and 6–9 extra AEs.
But Lion didn’t want to hire. They needed another way.
What I Walked Into
No tracking system—just reply-all email threads, outdated spreadsheets, and growing stress.
Burnout and overtime rising; team already maxed out.
No appetite for new tools or learning curves. (“We’re too busy for another system.”)
A six-month runway to deliver a slate that most teams take a full year (and twice the staff) to complete.
What I Built
SAMEpg started as survival tactics:
I set up a command layer: every show, episode, milestone, and asset tracked from day one—no extra logins, no templates to fill.
Automated the chaos away: cut approvals, media shipments, staffing, onboarding, timecards, and asset delivery—surfaced, ticketed, and followed up for the team.
Built a living knowledge base so every process, workflow, and deadline was documented—making remote onboarding instant and repeatable.
The Results
It wasn’t just smoother post—it changed the bottom line:
$2,700,000+ budget kept on screen
(No extra post sups or AEs needed, and we sidestepped all the usual overages and overtime.)3x output per staff member
(What would normally require three times the headcount, delivered by the team they already had.)1,000+ hours recovered
(Manual chases, last-minute approvals, “Where’s that cut?”—all eliminated.)40+ hours of finished programming delivered, on time, under budget
(From a cold start in June, to a full delivery slate by December.)Remote teams finally enabled
(Onboarding and daily work actually got easier, not harder.)
What I Learned
If you can run post at this scale, in this kind of deadline crunch, without hiring, you can do it anywhere.
SAMEpg was born in the trenches: not as a platform, but as a real post ops team—structured, calm, always on top of it.