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The growing rift between content providers and mainstream distributors from Time Warner Cable to Amazon and Apple, which are protecting their turf by connecting with mobile consumers in new ways, is beginning to resemble an existential play.
All of the players are desperate to preserve the status quo -- even as interactivity's new, inexorable reality sets in. They are inching their way into the digital frontier, while empowered consumers and tech-savvy outlier companies race past them, defining the new rules of play.
In this hotbed of transformation, lumbering media giants have swiftly been reduced to contemplating their existence. Will over-the-top streaming video on the Web eventually upend costly cable and satellite television delivery? Or will cloud commanders, such as Amazon and Google, trump them all with cheap, plentiful services? Is Apple's ecosystem of devices and walled content gardens going to prevent mainstream content producers and distributors from determining their own destiny because CEO Steve Jobs has liberated tech-happy consumers?
Bottom line: will the established media survive intact to see the next decade? Let's hope not.
According to disruptive innovation guru Clayton Christensen, even the biggest, most dominant companies resisting change are destined to decline, driven from the market by newer products and services designed for a new set of customers disillusioned by the incumbents.
In that broader context, the swelling ruckus over who owns what content when -- and who has what right to put it where -- looks like an exercise in futility. It looks like it would be wiser to embrace change than fight it.
Read Diane Mermigas' take on the current divide on businessinsider.com
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