I am surprised that the article didn't once mention the lack of advertisements on Netflix. The are inherently selling a different product than television by not having ads
By "different product than television" do you mean "different from broadcast and basic cable television in exactly the same way that premium cable television is".
But, yes, "premium cable" channels are things like HBO, not things like BBC America, even if the latter is only available on the top 3 of 7 tiers from a given provider.
No, much of cable is ad-supported broadcast channels and ad-supported basic cable channels. There are ad-free premium cable channels, but they aren't most of cable.