Public Opinion Knows How the Internet Ticks. Now They Want To Make It Kind
“If you can name the artist, you win five bucks.”
This is how Track Star, one of the most popular gameshows on TikTok, captures its audience now half a million followers: with a recognizable hook and an outstretched hand. For each episode, host Jack Coyne walks around New York City and offers strangers a chance to test their musical knowledge. Coyne picks a song. If the contestant can name the artist, they win cash, and the chance to keep going for bigger prizes.
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The premise of the game is simple. In fact, the very idea of a show based on street interviews seems like a quintessential representation of everything the internet favors at the moment — unknown characters, surprising twists, and an audience participation that only requires a cell phone and a working internet connection. In the past two years, Track Star has transformed into one of the biggest pit stops for any artist on a promotional cycle. They’ve tested the musical knowledge of Ed Sheeran, Jimmy Fallon, Remi Wolf, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chloe Bailey, Charli XCX, and even featured Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign. On its own, the show is a hit. But behind the scenes, Public Opinion, the company behind Track Star and a slate of culture trivia shows and long-form documentary videos, is a burgeoning creative team determined to prove that today’s internet content can be profitable, enjoyable, and kind — all at the same time. And trust them, it’s harder than it looks.
I meet up with co-founder Jack Coyne on a blustery Tuesday in November at the Public Opinion offices in Soho. At the moment, he’s trying to get into his musical headspace in preparation for a Track Star shoot with Christine and the Queens singer Rahim Redcar, which involves a lot of musical research. He’s got a surprisingly serious demeanor for a video host who’s most recognizable for the giddy, grinning persona that gets people to open up on Track Star. But that infectious energy, which I get glimpses of as he talks about his prepared list of songs, appears again the minute he’s asked about his reasons for starting the show.
“At the time, man-on-the-street stuff was starting to happen,” Coyne says. “But we all felt like it could be done so much nicer, kinder, better for you. So we’re like, ‘Let’s try and become like the vegetables of the sugary sweet man-on-the-street world and make something actually positive, but lean into these amazing characters and people that you get in New York City.”
Public Opinion, in its current iteration, was created in April 2022, alongside Jack’s brother Kieran and their friend and business partner Henry Kornaros. While the three aren’t major creator names in their own rights, their videos are highly recognizable for their combination of character-focused editing and digital anthropologist bent. The aesthetic prioritizes the consideration and exploration of things that otherwise might seem mundane — like learning about the intricate drama behind New York City’s lack of tennis courts or hearing why a basketball coach from Queens who loves Steely Dan needs exactly $240 dollars to buy every kid on her team their own basketball. But if that framing sounds familiar, it’s most likely because you know the person who got Coyne his start in video production — and who popularized it on the internet to begin with: YouTube star Casey Neistat. “I started working for him the summer after freshman year in 2010, and worked on his very first YouTube video while I was in college,” Coyne says. “We worked together for eight years. I remember walking down the street together, and he’d be filming himself with a selfie stick and people would be like ‘Who is this guy?’ Now you walk down the street and everywhere you go someone is filming themselves. At the time, I was like, ‘This is weird, but also, there’s something here.’”
After graduating, Coyne worked with Neistat as the YouTuber launched his social media app Beme — a combination of today’s Snapchat Stories and BeReal — that allowed users to send unedited video snippets of daily life from their back cameras. When the company was acquired by CNN in 2017, Coyne, as its first employee, got a new job and a check for a year’s salary all in one day. So, when CNN shuttered the operation in 2019, he felt confident that he had the skills and the team to keep going. So he started a YouTube, which led to more freelance projects, shoots, and ad campaigns — and eventually adding Kornaros full-time to the group.
“On one of the projects, we had to go to Tallahassee to shoot something at Florida State and Kieran couldn’t go, so Henry went, “ Coyne says, already laughing. “When we got to the airport, he had all this camera gear. But I was like, ‘Where’s your clothes?’ And he went, ‘Oh, shit!’”
“I had two cases, my backpack, my laptop, everything. But no clothes,” Kornaros laughs. His priorities were straight, according to Coyne, which was something the group needed. “We worked together a couple times after that and then were trying to figure out what’s next. And it was ‘Let’s make a company together.”
Public Opinion’s first show was an eponymous street interview series focused on New York City-specific trivia. It became a local success, for its comical interviews featuring city-based influencers and colorful locals. After months of filming, Coyne tells Rolling Stone, the team realized they wanted to create a second show that had broader appeal. “We get rejected all the time because some people don’t know anything about New York,” Coyne says. “But everyone can talk about music.
In the past two years, Track Star has surpassed the viewership of Public Opinion’s first series — reaching over 400,000 followers on TikTok alone and averaging close to half a million views per video, which doesn’t include the millions of views celeb-focused segments can bring. (One clip of a Track Star episode featuring Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has over 7 million views and counting.) With a slate nearing six to 10 shorts a week, Public Opinion frequently collaborates with brands and major musical stars. In fact, the show has gotten so popular that Coyne rarely has to send requests, as artists usually reach out directly to the staff. But while keeping their content both informative and compelling remains their goal, Coyne notes that kindness as a driving force is much easier said than done. “It’s so easy to go viral by making fun of people. One of our first videos we posted, someone got a trivia question about the five boroughs wrong,” Coyne says. “[The comments] were like ‘That’s so stupid.’ And I don’t love that reaction. It fuels negativity, and we’d much rather fuel positivity through the stuff that we’re doing.” It’s why one of the projects the team is most proud of is the one making them the least amount of cash: their New York city documentary series, which explores some of the city’s biggest ecosystems like electricity, sewage, public pools, and street signs.
“The most recent one, about where [municipal] water comes from, we spent months working on it,” Coyne says. “We spent thousands of dollars, realistically, to make it happen. But we got to meet people from around the state who are making this thing work, who are making the magic of you turning the faucet on and having water every day. And that’s a miracle.”
Jack, Kieran, and Kornaros all point to their experience and background as freelancers as part of Public Opinion’s success. There’s very little that’s sexy about the infrastructure behind running a business, but in a time when funds from social media pages can be entirely dependent on algorithms, knowing how to do taxes and file the right paperwork can be the difference between studios succeeding and shuttering. “Taxes are not sexy at all, QuickBooks, if you get into it, can be really fun, okay?” Coyne says, smiling. “The money tells the story. And if you can translate that, it can be empowering.”
In the next year, Public Opinion already has plans to expand their New York City-based documentary series, and are hopeful that more Track Star episodes can fund that dream. But they’re also excited about Track Star Presents, a new live performance series ala NPR’s Tiny Desk, where guests who stop by to compete in the show can hop on the mic for a quick set. Coyne can’t stop grinning as he looks at the performance space — and he’s clear that it’s all part of the same goal: posting and being kind at the same time.
“We’re not here trying to get rich off what we’re doing. We’re here trying to build a sustainable business that’s going to be around for a long time and continue to grow and churn out really great work that people like,” Coyne says. “We’re genuinely really optimistic people. When you go out in the street and film stuff, people are really nice and kind and want to spread love. So why not tap into that vein?”
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