I think we are all missing something pretty significant here!
Thinking like a JW, my instinctive reaction to this article would be:
If the anointed didn't stop being gathered in 1935, then when did they stop being gathered? A couple of years later maybe? How about 1940? No that won't do because most of the governing body were still not baptised then. So how about 1950, or 1960? I suppose it will have to be as late as that to include all the governing body. But hold on a minute, there were over a million Witnesses by 1960! The whole thing about the 1935 cut-off was that, although there was no precise biblical basis for it, it made intuitive sense because the number of Witnesses back then was still small enough to make a transition from the gathering of the last of the anointed to the beginning of the gathering of the great crowd look plausible. But move the date for the cut-off forward even by a few years, and that transition no longer looks plausible.
Getting rid of 1935 might seem like a necessary fix for a GB composed almost entirely of "replacements" under the old scheme, but it may have ramifications beyond what they have yet considered. Getting rid of 1935 solves the embarrassing situation that the whole cut-off/replacements theory caused. But it creates a much bigger problem. It undermines the whole concept that the anointed were being gathered since the first century until a specific point in recent history when the great crowd began to be brought in.
You simply can't think of a new cut-off point because none would make sense. Make it too early, and most of the GB are still "replacements". (plus a new date a few years later would simply store up the problem for the near future all over again) Make it too late and you are left with trying to explain why Jehovah was still looking for anointed ones when there were millions of Witnesses already. Were most of the millions of Witnesses in 1960s not good enough? Did he reject all the ones that came in the truth in the 1940s and 1950s in favour of the current crop of (mainly) weirdo younger "anointed" ones? My goodness, the more you think about this "new light" the less sense it makes!
If the anointed didn't stop being gathered in 1935, then it is hard to see why we should think they ever did/will stop being gathered. And if that is the case, then it radically undermines the idea that the 144 000 is a literal number. You might go so far as to say it undermines the whole concept of different "classes" of believer.
I think the GB might have opened a can of worms here. Although they have no doubt been forced into it by circumstances, it looks like a can of worms nonetheless.
In solving an increasingly obvious time-scale problem, I think they have created an even larger conceptual inconsistency.
Slim