OG: Approved - Public Opinion
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Name: Public Opinion
Instagram: 77K Followers
Tik Tok: 149.3K Followers
Youtube: 234K Followers
What Is Public Opinion?
Public Opinion is a New York City themed social-native series that started by quizzing strangers about the city and has slowly turned into something closer to a documentary operation with a game show attached.
Jack Coyne, his brother Kieran, and Henry Kornaros founded the company in April 2022. The first format was man-on-the-street trivia about New York history, infrastructure, laws, and politics. Coyne would pay people anywhere from five to a hundred dollars for correct answers. The first video pulled seven million views on TikTok. Before that, Coyne had worked with Casey Neistat, and you can see it in how the project treats the city itself as the subject rather than just the backdrop.
Track Star launched in January 2023 as a second project underneath their umbrella. Participants listen to a song through headphones and try to name the artist, going double or nothing with each round. Kamala Harris, Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kings of Leon have all played. The format works as a fast 90-second clip, but it also stretches into hour-long YouTube compilations. A large portion of the audience watches those on connected TV, which says a lot about how the content is being consumed.
The original Public Opinion show didn’t disappear. It changed. The team has moved away from the pure quiz structure and into longer documentary-style investigations on YouTube. One video following the city’s water system took months to produce and ended up connecting with infrastructure workers across the state. Coyne’s mother worked for the MTA for decades, and that perspective runs through the work. The channel treats public infrastructure as something worth understanding, not just something that exists in the background.
What’s interesting is how the two formats now sit next to each other. Track Star moves fast and pulls people in. The documentary work slows everything down and asks for more attention. One is built for immediate recognition. The other only works if you stay with it. Together they start to feel like two sides of the same idea, using the street as the entry point but not stopping there.
You can see the direction it’s heading. The questions are getting heavier. The answers are getting longer. The street is still the starting point, but it’s no longer the whole frame. It feels like a show that’s stretching itself, trying to figure out how much depth it can carry without losing what made it work in the first place.
Three Things We Love About Public Opinion
They turned a street format into a doorway, not a destination: Most man-on-the-street shows stay surface level because the format rewards speed. Public Opinion uses that same setup to pull people in, then asks questions that actually require thought.
They treat the city like something to understand, not react to: The newer episodes don’t chase hot takes or quick opinions. They focus on systems like water, infrastructure, and how the city actually works, using people as the entry point.
You can watch the questions get better over time: The early videos are about recognition. The newer ones are about reasoning. That shift changes the tone of the whole show without changing how it’s made.