85% of Media Companies Plan Archiving Overhaul as Legacy Systems Struggle

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla., December 4, 2025 - Pixitmedia by DataCore’s inaugural global State of Media Archiving survey has revealed a decisive industry shift in media and entertainment (M&E), with 85% of respondents planning to migrate to a horizontally integrated approach to their asset and media management.

This signals a clear departure from fragmented, multi-generation systems, as integration costs, data silos, and inefficient collaboration increasingly threaten operational scalability and efficiency.

The survey, which questioned 330 M&E professionals, identifies the main drivers of this transition as rising integration costs, multi-generational legacy system complexities, and siloed data libraries that hinder scalability and cross-team collaboration. Nearly half of respondents (45%) cite automation, metadata enrichment, and third-party integration, as key workflow challenges.

In response, three quarters (76%) of organizations 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. Digital service providers (10%) and houses of worship (7%) lead early adoption, while TV and video broadcasters remain the slowest, with just 3% completed and 10% reporting no migration plans. Adoption intent, however, is strong. 75% of houses of worship are currently evaluating ROI and business benefits, and all sports franchises surveyed plan to migrate within the next 24 months.

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%) favour 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, 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 to download here.