You can remove the ads but not the fluff content that pads the videos to make them longer. How about a subscription for concise and direct content?

YouTube shows you the parts most users skipped: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9314415 (That link is for creators, but the graph overlay is shown to everyone.) I can't imagine a better tool for doing exactly what you're requesting.

This is only available to the creators, isn't it? I don't recall ever seeing this as a viewer on YouTube. I have seen it on some...less savory video sites.

That YouTube link says that it's available to viewers, and I've certainly seen it before. Perhaps there's some A/B testing still going on?

The stuff I watch is repurposed public tv from around the world and doesn’t include that, yet.

I think it's great that they let the content creators decide if they want to include their own ads or not. You can always skip their ads, and some of the better channels have a progress bar for the ad portion.