Drop image: Narrative graph / point cloud (full bleed)
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Narrative Intelligence™
Narrative Intelligence™
Data-driven insights that drive cultural influence. We measure how culture is shaping us, and how we are shaping it, in real time.
~1,000
TV shows mapped
210
TV markets (DMAs)
~40s
From pitch to comp packet
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The platform at a glance
Two working products. One live world model beneath them.
AMERICAN STORY’s Narrative Intelligence platform is built around two working products, Narrative Ecosystem Analysis and the Entertainment Quality Index, and the operating system beneath them: CultureFeed, a live world model that keeps learning.
Product 01
Narrative Ecosystem Analysis
Our analytics tool to map narrative preconditions: the stories, characters, and plots an audience lives inside.
Product 02
Entertainment Quality Index
A predictive, quantitative read on how deeply a story will pull an audience in.
Operating system
CultureFeed
The operating system beneath both: a live world model of culture that keeps learning over time.
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Narrative Ecosystem Analysis
Know the terrain you’re walking into.
Every show or campaign enters a landscape with a pre-existing narrative: stories an audience loves, characters it trusts, teams they root for, stories that changed how a community is organized. A deep understanding of those preconditions is vital to success.
Proof of concept
~1,000 shows, 210 markets
We’ve mapped about 1,000 television shows by what they’re about (theme, genre, setting, period, format, and audience), then layered in how each show is searched across all 210 TV markets. The map shows where a kind of story draws interest, above or below an average show.
The full version
Heroes, villains, forgiveness
Which archetypes does this audience treat as heroes, and which does it distrust? What mistakes will it forgive? Does this region root for the underdog or the maverick? Those answers surface when you bring viewership, polling, and consumer data into the same map.
Drop image: DMA heat map / EQI comp packet
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Entertainment Quality Index
Where a story lands. How hard.
Knowing the terrain tells you where a story can land; EQI tells you how hard. In a fragmented, expensive media landscape, knowing the odds of success sharpens the strategic mission of major content investments.
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How EQI works
From pitch to comp packet in about forty seconds.
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Finding comps
The system places the pitch on the map and finds its true neighbors, discarding shows that matched only on a keyword. That’s the difference between keyword search and understanding premise.
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Reading records
It matches the features in the pitch, from grief and loss to a land-development conflict to a small-town setting, then reads the records of the closest shows.
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Charting markets
It projects what it learned from those shows across every TV market in the country.
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Writing the packet
It produces a comp packet, the kind of document a development team would spend days assembling. Start to finish, about forty seconds.
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CultureFeed: world model
A live world model that keeps learning.
Beneath both products sits our operating system: a live world model that keeps learning with each project, partner, news and campaign cycle. CultureFeed lets us increase understanding in real time and measure the direction of change over time.
Ingest
Every feed
Nielsen, Comscore, Amplified Intelligence, closed-caption data, focus groups, polling, and as many other feeds of data as we can get our hands on.
Watch
Agents in real time
We build agents that actually watch TV, capturing what static data sets miss: subtext, and the impression stories leave beyond the script.
Test
Polling & screenings
Content testing that unites political polling and focus groups with entertainment test screening to add bespoke layers and fill gaps.
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Data layers
Every layer plugs into the same system.
Layer
Source
What it tells us
Interest
Google search, public metadata
Where people look for a story
Viewership
Nielsen, Comscore
Where people actually watch
Attention
Amplified Intelligence
Whether they were paying attention
Impact
Panel surveys, matched markets
Whether beliefs and behavior moved
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Overton Delta
One piece of content is not enough to change the heart and mind of a nation.
The AMERICAN STORY model relies on producing Narrative Clusters: coordinated content ecosystems designed for a particular demographic or geography that, with time and repeated exposure, shift attitudes and create openness to new, or perhaps previously abandoned, ideas and values.
That cumulative shift is what we call the Overton Delta. Our Narrative Intelligence system tracks it through longitudinal polling, measuring changes in moral openness and attitude change following exposure to our content or narrative clusters.
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Persuasion architecture
How story moves minds that direct messaging cannot reach.
The moment an audience recognizes persuasive intent, its defenses activate. Our Narrative Intelligence system measures the content we produce against these metrics, so our content investments have the greatest likelihood of breakthrough.
Persuasion detection: lowest
Scripted drama
In consenting to suspend disbelief, the viewer also suspends much of the persuasion-detection apparatus. Values embedded in character and plot become experiences to inhabit, not arguments to evaluate.
Persuasion detection: low to moderate
Documentary
Following real subjects over time creates moral openness: audiences are allowed to be moved by real human circumstances without experiencing the content as persuasion.
Persuasion detection: low
Podcast
The highest-trust persuasion environment in American media. Hosts arrive as the view of a trusted friend, building parasocial depth unmatched by any other format.
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Who it serves
Built in-house. Ready for partners.
We developed this platform as an in-house tool to solve the problems AMERICAN STORY faces in its broad mission. Through that process, it became clear we created products that can serve a more diverse clientele: political campaigns, advocacy organizations, digital and independent media, and entertainment companies like ours.
We use every one of these tools ourselves, and we continue to refine them with each project.
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The team
Persuasion science and creative intuition, finally working from the same playbook.
Our AMERICAN STORY Tech team is led by Jared Starkweather, who previously led Applied AI and Engineering Operations at Upwork. Alongside our Emmy-nominated production team and expert campaign operatives, we are building the place where persuasion science and creative intuition finally work from the same playbook.
We are building as much of our AI infrastructure as possible in-house, reducing reliance on the major AI companies and keeping our models sovereign.