Storytelling was front and center at the annual NAB Show, the signature event for the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. This year’s conference in Las Vegas also highlighted how data has become a staple in the creative repertoire.
Industry backdrop: The media landscape has shifted dramatically from the onetime model dominated by large studios and linear broadcast schedules.
According to McKinsey, between 2022 and 2024 streaming video in the U.S. (measured in hours viewed) grew significantly while linear TV declined. By this measure, streaming is expected to surpass legacy TV by 2030.
Streaming services don’t store a single version of a show. They maintain multiple encodes, resolutions, languages, subtitles, trailers and regional variants — all of which increase storage requirements.
What’s more, their content libraries have long-term value for remastering, expansion, personalization and AI training.
Play ball: Live sports coverage drives subscribers to streaming platforms. It’s both must-watch TV for fans and one of the most data-intensive segments in M&E.
Sports broadcasts capture multiple camera angles and sensor data for analytics, officiating and fan engagement — often simultaneously. Social clips, highlights, behind-the-scenes content and short-form edits extend the lifecycle — and the storage demands — of every original asset.
With the 2026 Masters app from IBM, for example, golf fans could watch a “Round in 3 Minutes” for any player selected shortly after the final putt on 18. And thanks to AI agents, the Masters Vault feature made moments from every tournament since 1968 searchable through simple prompts.
On February 8, 2026, NBC and Peacock featured “4K All Day” for both the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl. While new formats improve viewer experience, they also expand data footprints.
Creator economy: The NAB Show now includes sessions and resources for attendees representing the millions of independent content creators attracting vast audiences throughout the world.
The McKinsey research shows that social video platforms with user-generated content are growing even faster than streaming video. Over the next four years, they’re forecast to leap ahead of both streaming and linear.
Digital tools as common as smartphones enable creators to produce high-end content. Generative AI ups their game yet again — in both quality and quantity of output to archive.
File sizes are growing, too. YouTubers often shoot and edit in 4K and then export in 1080 for viewing over the internet. In this way, a single high-volume YouTuber can generate terabytes of raw footage per month.
Summing up: “From individual creators to sports broadcasters, the volume of data generated, stored and reused is growing from terabytes to petabytes and beyond,” says Seagate Vice President Paul McParland.
Abundance of data combined with smart storage and tools enriches the creative palette:
- New value of data: In M&E, data is no longer defined by a single use or single project. Media companies, entrepreneurs and influencers can re-edit and repurpose content years after creation.
- Longer relevance: Older content gains new relevance when used to train models or generate personalized experiences.
- Storytellers’ assistants: AI streamlines workflows by automatically adding subtitles and dubbed audio, tagging footage, generating highlights and personalizing recaps in near real time.
Bottom line: “Data retention in this and every industry is now strategic, since deleting data can mean losing future revenue, insights and flexibility,” says McParland.
Learn more about Seagate’s M&E storage solutions.
