A New Kind of Production Company for a New Kind of Audience
In March 2026, while much of the Australian screen industry was still debating whether microdramas deserved serious attention, Ellen Dedes-Vallas and Alexander Di Meglio were already building for the format’s future. The pair launched Dripfed.TV, a Sydney-based vertical streaming studio delivering daily episodes under 90 seconds exclusively across Meta platforms, with a slate that spans scripted and unscripted content.
The launch was not a speculative gesture. It was a calculated bet on a format that Dedes-Vallas and Di Meglio believe has already proven its commercial and creative viability. “We know that socialverse content is really highly engaging, and we’ve seen Gen Z watching narrative content vertically every day on social platforms,” Dedes-Vallas told IF Magazine. “We asked, ‘What happens if you apply traditional screenwriting, character arcs, and production values to the formats people are already consuming?’ That’s where Dripfed.TV began”.
From Fat Poodle to Vertical-First
Dripfed.TV is an offshoot of Fat Poodle, the social-first production company Dedes-Vallas founded in 2018. Fat Poodle’s pedigree in branded content and social campaigns — including work for Tourism Australia and documentaries for Nine/Stan and SBS — gave the founders both the production infrastructure and the platform relationships necessary to launch a vertical-first studio without the overhead of a traditional television operation.
The slate reflects that hybrid sensibility. Link in Bio: Inside Australia’s Adult Industry, the launch title, is a 30-part unscripted vertical docuseries directed by Rhys William Nicolson that explores Australia’s online adult creator economy through the lens of the personalities who power it. The follow-up, Snakebite, is a scripted series starring Stephen Madsen, Kate Moore, and Jack Gatto, completed over four weeks using cinema cameras in native vertical format. The decision to shoot natively vertical — rather than cropping or reframing horizontal footage — is a statement of intent. Dripfed.TV is not adapting television for mobile; it is making television for mobile.
The Economics of Vertical-First Production
Di Meglio is candid about the financial realities of the studio’s early phase. “We’re not monetising from this currently,” he told IF Magazine. “It’s an investment from Fat Poodle’s perspective to ensure that it is a viable project, but we’re working with minimal to no budgets currently”. That honesty is instructive. The vertical microdrama market in Australia is still in its investment phase. Revenue models are evolving, and the platforms that will ultimately capture the bulk of the value — Meta, TikTok, YouTube, or dedicated vertical streaming services — have not yet consolidated their positions.
But the low-budget, high-volume production model that Dripfed.TV is pioneering may prove to be the template for Australian vertical content. By keeping episode lengths under 90 seconds and distributing directly through social platforms, the studio can iterate rapidly, test audience responses in real time, and build a library of content without the prolonged development cycles that characterise traditional television. The brand partnership with Kia, which supplied vehicles for the Snakebite shoot, demonstrates that even in the early stages, vertical-first productions can attract commercial integration.
A Test Case for the Australian Market
Dripfed.TV’s launch coincides with a period of mixed signals about short-form viewing habits in Australia. Data from the Australian Communications and Media Authority indicates that more people watched traditional free-to-air television in 2025 than in 2024, suggesting that the migration to short-form is not a simple substitution. Yet the FlareFlow conversion data and the rapid growth of microdrama consumption on YouTube suggest that vertical content is expanding the overall market for scripted entertainment rather than merely cannibalising existing formats.
For Dedes-Vallas and Di Meglio, the opportunity is to build an Australian vertical studio that can compete globally without waiting for the traditional industry to catch up. If Dripfed.TV succeeds, it will prove that the vertical-first model is not just a platform play — it is a production philosophy.
