About Us

DrakeLINE's first offering, in Spring 1993, answered a concern of Broadcast News coordinator John Lytle that majors needed a better simulation of the careers many of them hoped to pursue.

Prior to DrakeLINE, advanced Broadcast News and Radio-Television seniors produced a weekly news magazine, Focus, often around themes. Students heavily edited those programs before they aired.

What Focus lacked was deadline pressure and the “live” environment that marks broadcast newsrooms. Focus replayed several times a week on Des Moines cable, so it avoided timely news.

Using stories produced by 20 or so Broadcast News juniors and seniors, and CNN Newsource, DrakeLINE won a regional student Emmy its first year.

For its first decade, DrakeLINE produced twice weekly as live, quarter-hour programs during alternate spring semesters.

Starting in 2005, DrakeLINE moved to Thursday airings each spring.

Radio-Television seniors serve primarily as designers, director and crew. Carl Sundermann (RTV'05) developed DrakeLINE.com in 2005.

DrakeLINE expects to increasingly draw upon reporting from Drake's News-Internet seniors who report for their own spring capstone experience.