Opinion | Watching TV Used to Be Fun. It Could Be Again.

I try to watch TV, I swear. But every time I sit down to find a new show, I brace myself to run an exhausting digital gantlet. The viewing experience, which used to be relatively straightforward and, dare I say, fun now feels as overwhelming and unpleasant as walking into a dimly lit, warehouse-size dollar store in search of one decent spatula.

This is not something I should admit because I work in television. I started out as an agent and then worked as a producer, and now I’m a screenwriter who sells a pilot every year or so. I love working in television; I just no longer love watching it.

If the goal of streamers once seemed to be prioritizing and supporting great series from a diverse group of interesting creators, that goal seems to have shifted from making better shows to just … making more of them. As viewers, we’re being flattened by a fire hose of programming — and the experience of watching TV feels like a ritual of submission, passively accepting a slush of shows served up by a streaming service’s algorithm.

I’m not the only one who feels this way, apparently. How else to explain the surprising success of Tubi, a free streaming service that’s supported by ads and offers few prestige shows or buzzy hits yet set a new high for average monthly viewers earlier this year, beating out the average numbers for high-profile rivals like Disney+, Peacock and Max?

Tubi isn’t reinventing television; in fact, with its free programming and frequent ad breaks, it’s returning to a successful model. But the executives at Tubi seem to understand that viewers want to feel engaged and invested, not manipulated and pinned down. We want well-curated choices rather than an avalanche of mush.

Scrolling Tubi, my heart warms to find the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice” and the original “Bewitched”; I save “MasterChef” to watch with the family and flag a new Nicola Coughlan Channel 4 comedy, “Big Mood,” to savor immediately. While Tubi uses algorithms and personalized recommendations, its offerings feel more thoughtfully chosen, a mix of the familiar and the adventurous; as the TV critic Kaiya Shunyata put it, Tubi “feels very much like you’re choosing what you want to watch; it’s not an algorithm choosing it for you.” It’s a potent reminder of what we used to love about watching TV — and how we might rekindle that love affair.

As a TV professional, I was so curious about Tubi’s success that I decided to ask the woman who runs it: Anjali Sud, Tubi’s chief executive, who, much like me, came of age in an insular Indian community in Michigan in the 1990s. She recalls her family sitting down to ABC’s Friday night “T.G.I.F.” lineup of comedies. “I remember the comfort of it,” she said. “And it made me feel more fluid in the culture.” In some ways Tubi captures the essence of what TV used to be: free, accessible and broadly appealing — in other words, everything streaming isn’t.

Tubi’s viewership also skews relatively young — a large portion of its viewers are under 35 — and because the platform is free, its programming attracts a greater diversity of viewers than other subscription services. Many of Tubi’s viewers identify as “multicultural,” which covers Black, Latino, Asian and L.G.B.T.Q.+ audiences. “What people want is not something you can see in an algorithm or data readout,” Ms. Sud told me. The partnerships it has pursued, from a mentorship program with Issa Rae for digital creators to a script-funding deal with Franklin Leonard’s Black List, hint at real support for fresh talent.

I’ve spent two decades steeped in the entertainment industry, and traditional logic tells me that Tubi shouldn’t work. Its original shows haven’t leaned on fancy showrunners or big stars to lure in viewers, and its pre-existing library is made up of familiar reruns. But Tubi feels fun.

The experience offered by other streaming services too often feels like this: I reach for my phone to figure out what’s streaming, scrolling through articles with headlines like “95 Shows to Binge Before You Die” or “These 40 Shows Across 20 Channels Will Ruin Your Life — in a Good Way!” After I’ve narrowed down which app to open, the payment method has inevitably expired, or I’ve forgotten the password, or the one I’ve saved isn’t working, and my reward for finally logging in is to scroll past oceans of poorly made filler shows in search of something good.

I want something better from my TV-watching: I want a digital future for television that feels like it’s built by people, not a desolate machine-learning loop. I want to feel as if I might discover something so fresh and interesting, which makes me invest so wholly in the emotional lives of its characters, that I’m compelled to discuss it with everyone. I want to lie down on the couch, tune in to something I’ve anticipated and be overcome by surprise and delight.