With the NPO Backstage API a large amount of data is made available about programs of the Dutch Public Broadcasting (NPO). This API is part of NPO Backstage, an initiative with the NPO to investigate what innovative applications are possible with open data.

The data consists of more than 250,000 items, including thousands of clip descriptions, guest lists, program information and subtitles. The data relates to, inter alia, information on all journalistic programs of the Dutch Public Broadcasting and Schooltv. In addition to information about the programs themselves data can be found on age groups and more than 50 categories of subjects (‘technique’, ‘animals’, ‘learning’).

NPO Backstage API is based on Elastic Search technology and built in Python. The API collects data sets and combines them into one simple uniform design. Both original data and harmonized data is delivered via a RESTFULL JSON endpoint.

We have a GitHub repository which contains several Python examples on how to use the NPO Backstage API.