The amount of consumption by people that most of us would consider creative is often staggering. I will give one example. Take Adam Savage of Myth Busters. Have you seen his studio? He probably has million-dollar worth of stuff in his studio. All that stuff also counts as consumption...
To give an example, my wife and I are part-time performing magicians. Recently we took a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida. The themeing of those theme parks... by which I mean the environmental story-telling, the concept of dark rides and walk-through attractions, the live special effects and illusions that go into a lot of their attractions was extremely inspiring to me ... and got me thinking about how to apply some of those ideas to magic shows. Had I not been a "consumer" at those parks, I would have been closed off to that inspiration.
A common piece of advice given to young magicians is "find something other than magic." The point is that we don't need more copy-cats doing the same tricks. We need people with new and fresh ideas. While, philosophically, I'm not a subscriber to the idea that there is no such thing as "true originality", I will admit that it's rare. It shouldn't be controversial to say that most of the time creativity means taking existing ideas and combining them in novel ways. If you try to artificially restrict the amount of time that you are exposed to things that exist in life, you are artificially limiting the amount that you are opening yourself to new ideas and concepts that others have come up with.
I know from experience that you can consume "too much" and not produce enough. For me, specifically, I recognize when this starts to happen by my emotional state. I typically get restless and recognize that I've been spending too much time watching tv, or that it's been a while since I've made something or worked on a new routine or show idea. How much is the "right balance" is going to be highly individualistic.
And of course some people might "only" consume and not really create at all. As long as we're not talking about the rare cases of people living parasitically off of the productive output of others then I'm hard pressed to say that it's necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone has that creative drive and that's OK.
"Remix culture".
Less-creative people only consume, or are content with making a minor twist to something they encounter.
More creative people take inspiration from 1001 existing things, actively seek out particular ones, and transform bits & pieces into something new.
Gifted artists do that, but don't shy away from transforming the tools & technology used, as well. Sometimes creating truly unique works, or breaking open entire new fields (like a game designer starting an entirely new genre of games). This also happens in science.
Of course we should cherish such gifted artists. But I'm convinced everyone's got a creative streak - it's more like a skill that can be grown & enhanced.