FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. — There’s an industry shift in media and entertainment companies’ perspective on how to store their file footage and archival data, with some 85% of respondents to a first-ever global “State of Media Archiving” survey noting they plan to shift to “a horizontally integrated approach to their asset and media management.”
The findings come courtesy of Pixitmedia by DataCore, and continues a conversation in the broadcast technology space had across the last two years — that shifting from fragmented, multi-generation systems and data silos is essential for operational scalability and efficiency.
The survey saw 330 M&E professionals chime in, and multi-generational legacy system complexities dominated the conversation. Some 45% cite automation, metadata enrichment, and third-party integration, as key workflow challenges.
In response, some 76% of the 330 respondents plan to increase technology budgets over the next 12 months to modernize archiving capabilities to support content-intensive operations.
As of 2025, only 6% of M&E companies have fully migrated to a single platform approach to media archiving. TV and video broadcasters remain the slowest, with just 3% completed and 10% reporting no migration plans.
Hybrid deployments continue to dominate across M&E strategies, preferred by 42% of respondents. Looking ahead, 40% expect hybrid setups to remain their preferred configuration in 2026. Adoption varies by sector, with houses of worship (69%) and enterprise video teams (58%) leading the way. Currently, a quarter of respondents (25%) favor on-premises deployment, a figure expected to rise to 31% among those planning to host media archiving workflows in-house over the next 12 months.
AI-driven media archiving is now a top priority across nearly every M&E segment. Up to 39% of studios and 46% of enterprises are embedding AI/ML to enhance content operations. Almost half (45%) of respondents cited operational productivity as the primary benefit of AI/ML integration in media archiving workflows, with metadata enrichment, automated search, and deduplication the most in-demand AI capabilities.
“Our findings underscore what many in the industry already feel: traditional, siloed media archiving systems can’t keep up, and workflows must evolve to meet new operational realities,” said Barry Evans, SVP of Product Development at Pixitmedia. “With data and content libraries expanding across both traditional and digital-native segments, migrating to a unified, horizontally integrated approach enables companies to streamline operations, support collaboration across regions, and position themselves for sustainable growth in an increasingly content-driven market.”
Pixitmedia’s 2025 State of Media Archiving survey is available via download here.
