For years, our industry has chased the next wave of digital transformation: digital channel, streaming, data, AI. Each one promised connection, personalization, growth. And yet, what audiences increasingly crave today isn’t more content. It’s contact – on a very personal and physical level. We have reached a paradox: In the age of unlimited virtuality, people long for the real. This longing is not a nostalgia that the industry might want to overlook. This is a manifestation of something deeper: A human counter-reaction to the artificiality of a world that has become too frictionless, too optimized, too mediated by machines. The Age of Artificial Everything Artificial intelligence can now write scripts, generate music, and recreate faces of actors long gone. Virtual influencers will soon have millions of followers and digital twins will sell out concerts. And yet, the more “perfect” our virtual worlds become, the more our audiences feel something vital is missing. Call it “AI fatigue.” Call it “virtual saturation.” Either way, the emotional bandwidth of digital life is shrinking. The result is a cultural swing back to presence. To physical presence that provides a sensory, shared, lived experience. In psychology, this is a classic pendulum effect. The more we immerse ourselves in simulations, the more our nervous system seeks grounding. After decades of acceleration into a digitally dominated high-tech world, humans are remembering they have real bodies with their own senses and emotions. The Rise of the Phygital Lifestyle This rediscovery of the physical within the digital - the “phygital” shift - is not new, but it’s now becoming strategic. Phygital doesn’t mean rejecting technology. It means re-anchoring it. It’s the art of designing experiences that flow effortlessly between screen and street, between the narrative and the world it inhabits. We see this everywhere:
Netflix, the very symbol of digital entertainment, now builds Netflix Houses. These are real venues with themed restaurants, live experiences, and retail zones inspired by its stories. After years of teaching the world to binge, Netflix is now teaching them to belong. Studio Ghibli turned its timeless hand-drawn magic into a physical park in Japan. Their aspiration is to let people not only enjoy rides but rather immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the stories: a tactile translation of an emotional world. Warner Bros. and Universal continue to invest billions in expanding their film franchises into physical spaces. The Harry Potter and Jurassic Park worlds are not mere merchandising. They are world extensions. And that the new future CEO of Disney is rumored to be the current head of its parks divisions, speaks volumes. BBC Earth Experience in London transforms a nature documentary into a cathedral-like, immersive environment that invites people to walk inside the story. These companies are rediscovering an ancient truth: When you give audiences a place, not just a platform, you create belonging. The Local Advantage: Your physical presence Here lies a massive - and still largely untapped - opportunity for local and national media brands. While global streamers scramble to build community through bricks and mortar, local broadcasters already possess what algorithms can’t simulate: trust, familiarity, and shared cultural context. In markets with older audiences, this trust is gold. These viewers grew up with local TV as a constant companion, a source of information, identity, and connection. They still see it as credible, even comforting. What they need now isn’t another app. It’s an invitation back into the world curated by the brands they still recognize. Imagine: A local station transforming its morning show into a weekly community event, where viewers meet the hosts they’ve watched for years. A regional network turning a beloved cooking format into travel experiences and culinary pop-ups across the country. A news brand creating citizen town halls and transforming that dialogue into both broadcast content and physical community. Partnerships with retailers and shopping malls, bringing local TV formats alive in stores: the perfect bridge between content, commerce, and community. I am not cheerleading nostalgia of a broadcast era, that has passed long time ago. Instead I ask the TV and media businesses to think about strategic reinvention by using credibility as capital to design new revenue streams, deepen loyalty, and future-proof the brand in an era when trust itself is scarce. Why the Phygital Move Matters Now The phygital trend isn’t just aesthetic and a nice little vanity project. It is maybe more than that and rather existential for your traditional media business. AI will soon make producing high-quality video cheaper, faster, and more ubiquitous. The barriers to content creation are collapsing. In such a world, what separates one media brand from another won’t be its technology stack or its data model. It will be its emotional footprint. The brands that endure will be those that own moments, not just minutes of watch time. They will create spaces where people can connect and not just consume.They will translate storytelling into human choreography. From Eyeballs to Encounters The media business has long been about attention. But the next growth frontier will be participation. It’s the shift from counting views to creating viewpoints, from measuring impressions to designing impressions that last. In a world where AI generates endless virtual content, real-life presence becomes a competitive advantage. And the brands that master the phygital bridge - that blend the immediacy of digital with the intimacy of the real - will lead the next chapter of the media evolution. So here’s the question for every media executive:
Your audience is no longer asking for more content. They’re asking for human connection. What will you give them to step into with their full presence and not just to watch passively? |
