• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, October 20, 2014

For some reason -- and I honestly don't know why -- content makers somehow thought this digital lark was beyond them. Creating content was one thing, and getting it out to audiences was quite another. Hence, the past decade has since the rise of companies making millions of dollars out of distributing content rather than creating it. 

I'm still flummoxed when I look back that the record industry couldn't come up with Spotify or a group of television channels couldn't have launched Netflix together. 

Still, power is shifting back to more of a state of equilibrium as Spotify has been forced to give shares to the major record labels and now Netflix faces what it probably its biggest challenge to date. Not French protectionist politicians, but rather a content creator, Time Warner, announcing plans to launch HBO as a subscription-based, streaming service. The home of "Game of Thrones" and "Boardwalk Empire" is taking on Netflix and almost instantly, with accompanying poor growth figures, Netflix had more than a quarter wiped off its value. 

At the same time AOL and Yahoo have both unveiled plans to invest in original television shows they intend to stream to their audiences.

Let's not forget, of course, that Netflix has almost certainly seen this coming -- and thus its recent meteoric growth has come from the very well-received "House of Cards," which it created for its own subscribers. This underscores the theme of the last year or so -- content creators are waking up to content having been king all along. 

This is probably around the same time that people like me, who subscribed to Netflix to watch "House of Cards," realised there's not actually much else on it, unless ancient movies and movies you've never heard of are what you're looking for.

So forget the year of the mobile, that is claimed and forecast every year. This year, I believe, is the year content wakes up to its own power and realises the Emperors it believed it needed for distribution were actually walking down the road as nature intended.