Profile: newscast

Profile Schema

The newscast profile designates a document that always contains audio marked as newscast and is considered to represent a more ephemeral type of content that has a limited useful lifetime.

Structure

The newscast profile specifies the following attribute:

Name	Type	Required?	Explanation
expirationDateTime	date-time string	Yes	Newscast content should stopped being used after the expiration time except as historical information. Use the RFC3339 format set in UTC time (ex: 2021-11-04T08:49:00Z) (ex: 2021-11-04T08:49:00Z). See our tutorial on UTC time for more help.

A newscast document must also have the has-audio profile, which specifies an audio attribute. newscast requires that one of the links in the audio array contains one of the following rel values:

• npr-newscast: a newscast published by NPR, notably the National newscast.
• station-newscast: newscast streams published by Network Stations.
• consortium-newscast: a network stream published by Network Consortiums for use by Stations.
• newscast (deprecated): no longer used in favor of the more specific newscast types above.

Example newscast document

{
    "id": "mycdsprefix-mynewscast-202306220800",
    "profiles": [
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/newscast",
            "rels": ["type"]
        },
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/has-audio"
        },
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/listenable"
        },
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/document"
        },
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/publishable"
        }
    ],
    "brandings": [
        {
            "href": "https://npr-organization-host.org/organizations/s12345"
        }
    ],
    "owners": [
        {
            "href": "https://npr-organization-host.org/organizations/s12345"
        }
    ],
    "assets": {
        "5678": {
            "id": "5678",
            "profiles": [
                {
                    "href": "/v1/profiles/audio"
                },
                {
                    "href": "/v1/profiles/document"
                }
            ],
            "title": "Regional Newscast for June 22nd, 2023 at 8am EST.",
            "enclosures": [
                {
                    "href": "https://audio-host.org/newscast/2023062208.mp3",
                    "type": "audio/mpeg"
                }
            ]
        }
    },
    "audio": [
        {
            "href": "#/assets/5678",
            "rels": ["newscast"]
        }
    ],

    "expirationDateTime": "2023-06-22T09:10:00Z"
}

The National (NPR) Newscast

If you browse CDS for the hourly National Newscast (The newscast document in CDS owned by Service s1 or NPR), you will notice that the profiles array contains both a newscast profile and a podcast-episode profile. This is unique to the NPR National Newscast only. It is not required that you make all newscast documents be a podcast-episode document that are attached to a podcast-channel collection.

Mixing profiles in CDS is not unusual and is possible with the profile schema data architecture. In this case, NPR chooses to do this because each hourly newscast is in fact both a newscast and a podcast.

NPR produces the NPR News Now podcast, which uses the audio from the NPR hourly newscast. This audio is monetized and distributed through the major podcatchers and also offered through the NPR App and website. At the same time, the NPR hourly newscast is a newscast and so it is labeled as such in CDS in the profiles array. Please see the legal guidelines for premium content for guidance on the premium content in these episodes.

Below are snippets from an example CDS document for the 5-minute NPR News Now podcast episode. Note how it is both a newscast document and a podcast-episode document.

Note this has both a podcast-episode and newscast profile:

{
    "id": "nx-s1-12345-1600-long",
    "profiles": [
        // ...
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/podcast-episode",
            "rels": ["type"]
        },
        //...
        {
            "href": "/v1/profiles/newscast"
        }
    ],

You’ll notice podcast specific fields like a podcast-channel collection and episodeGuid:

    "collections": [
        {
            "href": "/v1/documents/500005",
            "rels": ["podcast-channel", "slug", "theme"]
        }
    ],
    //...
    "episodeGuid": "9b153801-0bf7-4043-8f4d-1739e8c47117",
    "episodeType": "full",
    "explicit": false,
    "feedEpisodeTitle": "NPR News: 02-10-2026 4PM EST",

There are also newscast specific fields:

"expirationDateTime": "2026-02-10T17:20:00-05:00",