The Next Move
The machine calls it.
A supercomputer of doubtful pedigree. It reads every tape on the board, finds the storylines that just lit up, and calls where each one goes in the next 72 hours. Then the clock runs out and it is scored, here, hit or miss.
THE CABINET IS A JOKE. THE SCOREBOARD IS NOT.
NM-1 · NEXT MOVE MACHINE
WARMING UP
READING THE TAPES
The scoreboard
0called it
0missed
0still counting
--hit rate
On the clock
The machine's open calls. Each one is sealed when it is made and scored when its 72 hours are up.
Read straight
Some storylines are about a death, a crime, a court or a scandal. The machine still counts them and is still scored on them, and it drops the act: no voice, no joke, only what the board's coverage is likely to do.
The ledger
Every call that has been scored, newest first. Nothing is taken down for being wrong.
The pattern book
What the board's own back catalogue says about storylines that light up.
What it is, and what it is not
- A storyline is a name that several different channels on the board put in a tape title inside the same 72 hours.
- A call is a count: how many channels will still carry that name in the next 72 hours. It keeps its legs, or it fades.
- The odds are counted, not felt: of the past storylines on this board that lit up the same way, how many kept their legs.
- It calls stories, never people. It does not say what will happen to anyone, what anything means, or that anyone planned it.
- It does not do its bit over grief. A storyline about a death, a crime, a court or a scandal is read straight: the count, without the act. The hardest ones (a child, a suicide, a sexual crime, a death that is days old) are held back entirely and never air by themselves.
- It can be checked. Every call links to the tapes that score it, and carries a seal made when the call was made.