While cutting the ads you'll get such a good look at them, ads companies will be thrilled and beg you to do it :-)
> If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief?
The behavior of people watching TV or listening to radio is well studied. Here's some facts:
1. even if you change the station, you'll still see or hear some ads, especially if you want to get back to what you were watching, as people keep changing back and forth — and those ads are for brands mostly, therefore it's enough for you to see Coke's logo for you to pick it in a store as the "safe" choice
2. many TV and radio stations synchronize their ads breaks
So are you committing theft when skipping commercials? If you use automation for it, the jury is actually still out and there have been several lawsuits already.
Also skipping ads might be legal still, but there are always legal loopholes. For example circumventing DRM is not legal and it's only a matter of time before media networks wise up.
And note there have been other doomsday scenarios in the past. For example the rise of VHS was a similar event, allowing people to record shows and skip ads. But even so, ads kept being efficient and publishers and media networks survived. However this time the automation has reached a level unprecedented in history.
What do you think will happen if companies start going out of business due to ad blockers? They'll start lobbying of course and lobbying works.