National Public Radio to Launch NPR API

Andres Ferrate, July 16th, 2008

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Some exciting media API news this week as National Public Radio (NPR) has announced that it will release a public API in the coming days. NPR, an internationally acclaimed media production and distribution non-profit, is best known for a wide array of non-commercial radio programs.

Update: This API is now live. See their announcement here.

According to NPR:

In the next couple of days, NPR.org will be launching our new API, which will be an open and extensive way for our users to share and mash-up our content. Once live, we will be adding a new link on the NPR.org left nav in the Services section called “Tools / API”. We are very excited about this new tool and are looking forward to the inventive ways that you will use our content!

This is the first talk radio API of which we are aware that provides access to a station’s content. We’ve added a new NPR API profile to our API Directory.

NPR has released preview images of two new widgets developed with a preview-release of the API: an iPhone widget developed by Axiom Stack and a map widget that displays NPR stories based on Geoff Gaudreault’s Reverbiage site.

NPR iPhone Widget

Reverbiage Mashup Widget

We’ll be adding these two widgets as well as other NPR API mashups and applications to our mashup directory once the API is released. Clearly, with not only NPR, but big name traditional media properties like the New York Times opening-up APIs, we’ll be seeing additional media mashup opportunities in the near future.