Smosh Hires MTV Executive as First Chief Content Officer

Something is changing at the top of the creator economy. YouTube's oldest comedy brands are no longer run by their founders or promoted-from-within managers. They are hiring executives straight out of legacy television.

Smosh just named Cory Midgarden its first-ever Chief Content Officer. Midgarden spent 14 years at Paramount, most recently as VP of Digital, Social and Streaming Content at MTV Entertainment Studios. His new job: build original formats and long-running franchises for a YouTube brand that has existed for over 20 years and never had a dedicated content chief until now.

This is not an isolated hire. It is a pattern.

From YouTube Channel to Media Company

Smosh began in 2005 as a two-person sketch comedy account. Today it operates with 70 full-time employees under CEO Alessandra Catanese, who took over in 2023 after the brand's founders reacquired it from Mythical Entertainment. Catanese herself came from Maker Studios, Patreon, and talent management. Her first major executive hire in 2021 was Daniel Tibbets, brought in as Smosh's first-ever CEO with a background in traditional media.

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The Midgarden appointment follows the same logic. Each time Smosh reaches a new stage of scale, it imports an executive from the television industry to formalize what was previously handled informally. First a CEO. Now a CCO. The creator economy is running a corporate playbook, just a decade behind Hollywood.

Hollywood's Loss Is YouTube's Gain

The timing is not a coincidence. MTV Entertainment Studios, where Midgarden worked for over a decade, was merged with Showtime's production division in 2023, then folded into a revived Paramount Television Studios in 2025. That kind of restructuring pushes experienced executives out of traditional media at exactly the moment digital platforms are organized enough to absorb them.

Keith Cox, who originally brought Taylor Sheridan to Paramount, is also exiting MTV Entertainment Studios around the same time. As Hollywood consolidation continues, the US$250 billion creator economy is becoming the landing pad for mid-to-senior entertainment talent who would previously have moved between broadcast and cable.

Byron Allen's US$120 million acquisition of BuzzFeed in May 2026 points in the same direction. Another 20-year-old digital-native brand, another institutional leader brought in to restructure it. The message from the market is consistent: scale alone does not sustain a creator business. As one industry analysis put it, "the easy growth is over and scale alone no longer guarantees leverage."

What This Means for Asian Marketing Leaders

The creator economy's professionalization is happening faster in Western markets, but the trajectory is global. Asia Pacific's creator economy is projected to reach US$390.7 billion by 2034, and the region's largest creator brands will face the same governance questions Smosh is answering now.

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For marketing leaders in Asia who work with creator-led channels or influencer-driven media, this shift matters for two reasons. First, creator platforms with proper executive leadership are more predictable partners. Brand deals, content strategies, and audience development become less dependent on individual personalities. Second, as creator economy M&A climbs (transaction volume rose 17.4% year-over-year in 2025, with WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis Groupe among active buyers), the institutional structures being built today will determine which creator brands survive consolidation.

Smosh's 20-year arc from two people with a camera to a 70-person operation with a C-suite is not just a success story. It is a preview of where the rest of the industry is heading.