Indeed the rise of streaming, and the manner in which it has radically reshaped the delivery of content to audiences, frequently seems to beg the question: is Netflix killing television?

The answer, perplexingly, is both yes and no.

In terms of real scale, it's important to remember that Netflix itself is in real terms the size of a cable channel. It is, by any other name, HBO, Showtime or ESPN.

It is getting bigger but it's easy to lose the scale of the situation when the media obsess about one brand in particular, sometimes to the exclusion of all others.

And yet Netflix's opponents are simultaneously challenged, by both its ability to seemingly spend billions on content, at a time when many are struggling to fund content, and by its tendency to hoover up content creators, such as Baz Luhrmann, David Fincher, Jenji Kohan, Robert Kirkman and Shonda Rhimes, the same creators that all platforms depend on to churn out compelling content.

The last of those deals, the poaching of America's reigning queen of television Shonda Rhimes from American network television to the hallowed halls of Netflix, also seems emblematic of a larger trend.

Or, if you want to get deep, a trend within a trend.

Behind the larger wave of creatives (writers, directors, producer-showrunners) migrating away from film to cable television - that well-heeled cliche, the new golden era of television - is another trend in which those same creatives seem to be migrating from traditional television to Netflix.

In poaching Rhimes, Netflix might seem to be banking on a writer-showrunner who has no cable or streaming runs on the board. Rhimes' big hits - Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder - are all network dramas.

Inclusive of her other series, Private Practice, Off The Map and The Catch, she has two failures to four successes; that's not an even chance but it's not an unbroken run of hits either.

But therein lies the key to Netflix's growth.

Having soaked up the audience for high end content - that is, its war with HBO and other top tier cable channels - Netflix is now chasing new audience by pitching broader, to the audience for network television dramas.

Like most disruptive businesses, the real question when trying to interpret the evolution of Netflix, is not why it is disrupting the existing business, but what happens when it is done.

In the case of Uber, for example, the consumer's fast embrace is driven by a dislike of the taxi monopoly; but having disrupted its competitors out of business, Uber ultimately becomes the same thing, just another monopolistic business with no competitive imperative for improvement.

Netflix, despite its vibrant youth and generous purse, lives in constant danger of doing the same thing.

Its ambition drives it to scalp its competitors, steal their creatives and steamroll the business into its way of thinking.

But ultimately a lack of competition is as deadly to Netflix as too much. And striking the right kind of balance is a nuanced manoeuvre.

When Netflix was born, many heralded it as the death of pay television, though by definition they are one and the same.

That bruising first round established a low point of entry - just US$10 a month - though Netflix has posted price increases in both Australia and Canada.

In practice, the rise of second generation streaming channel services - that is, mini-pay TV platforms offering smaller suites of streamed linear channels - will do far more damage to traditional pay TV than Netflix ever could.

Those services - with names in the US like Sling TV, DirecTV Now and Playstation Vue - are pitched at young "cord cutters", and appeal because they have no physical hardware requirements, such as cable boxes and smart cards.

But warehousing the industry's best talent does no good either.

Worse, the fear of losing creatives to Netflix forces good networks to make bad decisions. Would FX have let Kurt Sutter make The Bastard Executioner if not for that fear? Or HBO David Simon's Show Me a Hero?

Sometimes a free hand is not the best hand. Nor does it make the best content, without the creative conflict of talented network executives. (It might seem surprising, but there are more of those than people give good networks credit for.)

So, where to now for Netflix?

In May the company's CEO Reed Hastings declared it would spend US$6 billion on original content this year, a staggering figure in real terms, and one which flags the company intends to exponentially increase its original content.

And in truth they need to: the Shonda headlines may just the silver lining to the otherwise dark cloud of an impending divorce with Disney.

That studio - ranked the most profitably of the "big six" by The Hollywood Reporter for the last three years in a row - recently confirmed it would begin dismantling its streaming agreements with Netflix to launch its own standalone platform.

And Disney will not be the last to do so.

It makes sense for any major studio with a large content library to create a direct to consumer relationship, and cut out the percentage-taking middle men who have formed the flabby centre of content distribution for decades.

And that, not Netflix, is television's real future.