The "streaming" referred to here referred to pirate sites a la Fmovies or Couchtuner. They're not quite as front and center as they were before Google decided to be the Internet police but there's always foreign search engines to light the way.
Not everyone knows about alternatives to streaming. For the daily 10000 (xkcd for reference), that's all they know. It's up to "us" to show them there are alternatives.
That's not exactly a widely held viewpoint by the younger generation. Besides, it's not like the offshore streaming sites are engaging in revisionism or dropping shows to subscribing reasons.