> 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".

I'm pretty sure most 'premium' cable channels include commercials. Unless you restrict that to things like HBO only. If so, then you left out a bunch of channels that are cable only and outside of the 'basic' grouping.

The distinction between "basic" and "premium" cable is much muddier these days, because what is classically "basic" is no longer a single pacakage but a bunch of tiers, and what is classically "premium" is no longer sold on a channel-by-channel basis (e.g., HBO used to be one channel, paid separately) but in its own packages (e.g., all HBO, Cinemax, and Starz channels together as one package) by cable providers.

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.

Ads for your own content are still ads. I just want to watch 20 minutes without interruption.

Isn't cable ad free also?

> Isn't cable ad free also?

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.