Eighty Years of WGTB: A Retrospective on Georgetown’s Alternative Radio Station

An early campus booklet champions WGTB, with its impressive equipment and recording studios, as a proud aspect of university life. 

As the first university radio station in the DC area, WGTB (originally GBS) oversaw two studios with groundbreaking technology. During the station’s four-year hiatus brought by World War II, the U.S. Navy availed itself of the station’s equipment. 
 

In its early years, WGTB was perhaps best known for airing the Latin Mass for local shut-ins and for its weekly “Georgetown University Forum” broadcast. The Forum was a University-produced weekly public affairs panel discussion program.
 

In 1960, WGTB acquired its FM license with an assigned frequency of 90.1FM. C-SPAN now occupies the same wavelength. 

In 1970, WGTB’s antenna tower fell from the roof of Copley Hall. Subsequently, the station was ordered out of commission. Occurring at the height of tensions with Georgetown's Physics Department, who claimed it interfered with their equipment, WGTB supporters were skeptical as to the accidental nature of this incident.
 

Georgetown University hired Kenneth Sleeman as WGTB’s general manager in December 1971. While initially a strict authority over the increasingly defiant student staff, Sleeman eventually grew sympathetic to their leftist agenda. 

Ultimately, he was terminated in 1975 for permitting anti-war programming and controversial content, such as songs featuring profanity.
 

Despite being only ten years apart, these program guides demonstrate the radical shift in WGTB’s ethos marked by the 70s, with austere shows like Evening Recital and News phased out for quirkier ones like Clark Kent and the Collective State of Quack and Midday Alternative News.”

At the advent of the 1970s, students announced the station’s emphasis would be on rock’n’roll, a genre disparaged just a few years prior. This embrace of alternativity marked an identity-shift that remains today.
 

On February 9, 1971, a severe earthquake struck Los Angeles, disrupting phone lines and leaving families across the country desperate for news of their loved ones. In response, WGTB-FM established a 24-hour volunteer relay message service.
 

In 1975, WGTB hosted the Pandamedia Festival, a musical fundraising event headlined by progressive rock band Happy the Man. The event was a success, netting over $35,000.
 

WGTB and the Georgetown administration butted heads over the station’s increasingly left-wing focus. The climax of these tensions can be seen in the Washington Free Clinic controversy, where students advertised the services of a local abortion clinic, bringing a FCC suit and University crackdown.

 

Angry Ears was the newsletter of the Committee to Save Alternative Radio (CSAR). CSAR emerged in April 1976, protesting a WGTB shutdown that began on March 16. The University stated that the closure, which lasted until June 16, was intended for station reorganization, hiring a new general manager and updating technology.

In fall 1978, Georgetown asked the Federal Communications Commission to assign WGTB’s FM license to the University of the District of Columbia. The University also transferred an estimated $40,000 worth of equipment. WGTB continued on air until its 1978-1979 budget ran out.

The WGTB-FM license was officially transferred to the University of the District of Columbia in January 1979 for the nominal fee of $1.
 

Hundreds of students unsuccessfully protested WGTB’s closing at a rally in Healy Circle on January 31, 2979. The protestors carried signs with slogans such as Why Must This Happen and Disco sucks.

Campus radio was resurrected in 1982 with WROX-AM, an album-oriented rock format station broadcasting to individual campus buildings over carrier current at 690 AM. The station reverted to the WGTB call sign in 1985 and moved to an alternative format.