By: processexcellencenetwork
Tolosa says the next wave of entertainment belongs to those creators who know how to operate where fans and culture meet
It started, strangely enough, with a book Jose Tolosa once ignored. One summer in 1995, as a young intern at Banco Popular in Puerto Rico, he was handed a copy of “Being Digital” by Nicholas Negroponte. The book imagined a world transformed by the shift from “atoms” to “bits.” At the time, he shelved it. Years later, after studying case studies on disruption in business school and experiencing it firsthand rising through the ranks of global media, Tolosa pulled it back down.
“Going from atoms to bits means that an asset goes from being physical to digital,” he recalled. “Which means the entire value chain, and everyone in it, changes, gets disrupted.”
That single concept became a compass. In media and entertainment, the journey from atoms to bits upended who controls value, what scale means, and how audiences engage. Tolosa built a career navigating and shaping this transition.
Over the last two decades, business leader Jose Tolosa has served as Chief Transformation Officer of ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) and CEO of Meow Wolf, the immersive arts company redefining experiential entertainment. His work bridges operational rigor and creative innovation, scaling businesses while staying anchored in story and purpose.
Today, Tolosa is focused on what comes next.
What Broke and What Replaces It
For decades, the media business was built around a centralized value chain. Talent created content. Producers shaped it. Then Networks and Distributors (what he calls the “Middle”) packaged and delivered it, and also were gatekeepers controlling access, capturing value, and setting the rules. But the internet broke the bottleneck, it broke the power that the “Middle” had enjoyed for so long.
“The internet removed the need for distributors,” Tolosa said. “It gave creators direct access to their audiences. The entire economic structure of scarcity just vanished.”
The first domino fell when platforms like YouTube let anyone broadcast to the world for free. Then streamers like Netflix proved you didn’t need cable TV to reach millions. Gatekeepers lost their grip, and from there, their growth and their margins.
Between 2007 and 2012, the ground shifted. Social media democratized publishing. Streaming unbundled distribution. The media’s center of gravity began collapsing.
“Legacy companies hesitated,” Tolosa said. “They waited too long, and the audience moved on.”
From Distribution Bottleneck to Attention Bottleneck
Today, the challenge isn’t reach, it’s relevance. In a world where anyone can upload content, competition is no longer about access. It’s about attention.
“Netflix pays millions for an episode,” Tolosa pointed out. “YouTube gets billions of minutes for free.” Platforms no longer need content from the traditional middle. But creators still need help rising above the noise.
That’s the new bottleneck: not who can publish, but who can matter. And to win in this era, Tolosa believes companies must follow three core principles.
The Three New Rules of Media
- Own Differentiated IP
Intellectual property – characters, stories, worlds – is the gravitational core. It’s what turns audiences into fans and content into ecosystems. “Fandom is the new currency,” Tolosa said. “People don’t just want to watch something. They want to live in it.” Whether it’s MrBeast’s media empire, Marvel’s multiverse, or Meow Wolf’s surreal environments, the value lies in creating something that audiences want to return to again and again. - Have a Direct Relationship with Your Audience
The important concept is owning the feedback loop: publish, observe, learn, adapt. “If a third party controls your audience, they control your future,” Tolosa said. At Meow Wolf, that meant launching their own app to stay connected beyond the exhibits and building exhibits that could understand and interact with its fans; exhibits that were not just “broadcasting” entertainment to audiences. Across the industry, creators are building email lists, communities, and owned platforms to reduce reliance on algorithm-driven platforms. - Build a Diversified Revenue Model
Surviving on ads or subscriptions alone is a losing game. Today’s winners blend revenue from multiple streams: merchandise, memberships, licensing, live experiences, and more. “Diversification isn’t just smart—it’s survival,” Tolosa said.
The New Middle: Aggregators at the Edge
With the old media middle collapsing, a new kind is forming: smaller, faster, creator-first.
Think of agencies that also produce. Collectives that offer monetization, data, and distribution. YouTube managers turning into full-service media companies. And creators themselves, building their own universes with infrastructure to support others.
Legacy companies are racing to adapt. They’re trying to evolve into IP houses, brand builders, and experience engines, not through scale, but through utility. “The companies that thrive will do so not because they’re big,” Tolosa said, “but because they’re indispensable to creators and fans alike. They will operate at the “edge” of those constituencies.”
Meow Wolf: A Case Study in Edge Strategy
When Tolosa became CEO of Meow Wolf, the company was already a breakout success with immersive exhibitions in Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Denver. But he saw a bigger opportunity: to evolve Meow Wolf into a transmedia storytelling engine.
That meant evolving its original IP: characters and narratives that could travel across formats. It meant building new platforms for fan connection, including the Meow Wolf app. And it meant entering publishing, gaming, and video, while preserving the artist-led DNA of the brand.
“We weren’t chasing trends,” he said. “We are building a creative ecosystem. Not just a venue.”
Final Word: Why the Edge Wins
Back in 2016, while at Viacom, Tolosa proposed a strategy shift: from being network-focused to IP-led. Control the franchises. Monetize across platforms. Build direct fan relationships. He called it “strategy in motion.”
At Meow Wolf, he put it into practice, combining art, technology, and story to build something fans could inhabit.
Now, he sees a clear frontier. “The middle has collapsed,” he said. “But the edge, if you know how to operate there, is more powerful than ever.” That edge belongs to creators but it also belongs to the next generation of aggregators, studios, and platforms that know how to support them, without recreating the old middle.
As Tolosa sees it: there’s no going back. But for those bold enough to build at the edge, there’s everything ahead.
