At WGTB, it has always been about the music. Long a center point of artistic individuality and underground, lesser known tunes, WGTB has undergone many transitions in its rock and roll history. Now hoping to shed its former reputation as an “indie only” station, WGTB is looking toward the future and the possibility of attracting a new class of listeners.

Shannon Vosseller (COL ’97) was part of the group of students that resurrected the shut-down Georgetown radio station and turned it into a broad spectrum from what it was before: the locally popular and progressive anti-war voice of the 1970s.

Before Vosseller’s time, WGTB took an actively liberal stance, one that caused considerable conflict with university officials. The station also bothered the physics department, whose experiments were frequently disrupted by the WGTB radio transmitter. The
station was eventually shut down and its broadcast frequency, 90.1 FM, was sold by then-president Fr. Timothy Healey to the newly- founded University of the District of Columbia for the bargain basement price of $1. Incidentally, UDC made a handy profit 18 years later, turning the frequency over to C-SPAN for a cool $25 million.

After an attempt at acquiring a Low Power FM (a radio service) signal in 2000, the station moved to Web casting, which requires listeners to access WGTB’s Web site and open a broadcast stream with a media program. “A big part of it was a lot of us felt we enjoyed music and it was a big influence in our lives and something we wanted to share with others” he said. “For me, it was less about radio and the medium and more about music and the discovery of music.”

From contemporary U.K. pop to a Jesuit-hosted show, the first semester of the new WGTB was eclectic, according to Vosseller.

No longer striving to be a progressive voice in the D.C. area and without an FM radio frequency to broadcast on, WGTB became a canvas for students to show off their musical savvy.

“Our first show was a German classical music show where the DJ was the president of the socialist club,” Vosseller recalled. “Certainly not your average Joe Hoya, but his taste in classical music was really good.”

Since then the station has moved, with only recent success, to more diverse programming in the hope of appealing to more than the indie set it is primaril;y known for. With shows from friends airing out their lives to gangsta rap, reggae and the newly-established sports department, WGTB is reaching out to a broader set of listeners. Listener response has been lukewarm, however, with most shows picking up between five and 10 listeners and the most popular ones drawing close to 30.

Burleith Banter

For Claire Riesenberg (COL ’08), the station’s programming director and a radio DJ, her involvement with the station has not been about being a popular DJ.

She and Sarah Heydemann (COL ’09) host “Be Born, Grow Up, Move Out of Burleith!” Tuesdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and even though their online audience is rarely larger than 20, putting on the show is one of the highlights of the two students’ weeks.

Dancing in their chairs this Tuesday, headphones on and microphones off, Riesenberg and Heydemann were getting ready to start their show as “The Gutterati?” by The Fratellis was fading out.

As the applause at the end of the track began, the two kicked off their shoes and Sarah stole a sip of Riesenberg’s Diet Coke. WGTB DJs aren’t famous and they have listenerships you could count on your fingers and toes, but this show, like many, is not about being a cutting edge DJ. For these two, each song has a personal tie, and, like a soundtrack diary, the DJs take turns describing the personal significance of the song being played.

“This is just chill-out time for us,” Riesenberg said. “It’s really relaxing to have the show once a week to play music.”

They cut each other off and finish each other’s sentences as the conversation runs from Purim to Georgetown Women’s Week to the (sparse) happy moments of The Departed before introducing the next song.

“Banter is key for our show,” Heydemann said “It’s totally different having a co-host.”

Riesenberg remembers her solo show days and turning the music up, as if the louder the voices in the songs, the closer she’d be to real company in the studio, but now the girls’ conversation fills the silence.

“We never finish each other’s sentences, I swear,” Heydemann blurted out on the air, immediately after doing just that.

They’re having a conversation they’d be having even if the mics were off.

Booty Bass

From midnight until 2 a.m. Thursday nights, the doctor is in.

Max Freed (MED ’10) and Alex Patten (COL ’10), an unlikely combination, host “TONS O’ GUNS,” a gangsta rap, hip-hop and booty bass (a Miami based style of hip-hop known for its explicit lyrics) show.

Freed is one of the only graduate students involved in the station, and the only medical student. He said this year will be his last on the air because the demands of third-year course work will overwhelm him.

“[The show] is whatever I’m feeling at the moment,” Freed said. “Last week it was more of an indie dance scene because I was getting ready to do a party and that’s what I was thinking of.”

Before enrolling at the medical school, Freed was an undergraduate at Vassar College with a pair of turn tables, a box of records and an interest in mixing.

“I remember I had [the tables] when I moved into college but I think one of them was broken, and one was more of a shelf.”

Freed’s real DJ work came after getting an MP3 manipulation program, Serrato, which he now uses to mix digitally. Just this semester, the technology in the WGTB booth has allowed him to perform live during the show.

While medical school has kept him too busy to perform at Georgetown, Freed was able to perform at Vassar and hopes to again before the start of the next school year. While Riesenberg and Heydemann are more benign chit chat, Freed and Patten relish pushing the envelope on the air.

“Sometimes it’s Alex and I telling unfunny jokes and offending our listeners,” Freed said. “Then we found out how bad we sound so now I’ll put an instrumental on while we’re talking.”

Their description on WGTB’s Web site contains no verbs and reads simply: DEEP BEATS, BOOTY BASS, GANGSTA RAP AT 45 RPM. And Patten sports one of the biggest Mohawks you’ll find on campus, but despite the pair’s outlandish presentation, it is indeed about the music.

Ask Freed what booty bass is and he’ll give you a real answer, telling you about Miami night clubs, DJ Assault and 2 Live Crew’s infamous, if brief, fame. For Freed, the music is about people enjoying themselves and dancing.

“I’ll listen to hip-hop in my headphones but if I’m playing music for other people, I want it to be something they can dance to. I like dancing. I like making people dance.”

But for all the dancing and frivolity of the club beats he broadcasts, a gangsta rap edge is not lost on Freed.

“‘TONS O’ GUNS’ is not just a name, you know,” he says walking out of the weekly WGTB meeting. “It’s a way of life.” And with that he reaches into his pocket to reveal his pistol permit.

Behind the Booth

Dan Cook (COL ’10), the second sophomore to run the station in as many years, thinks his class will see the station do more than just broadcast on the web. As the station’s general manager, Cook wants to see a more organized, more popular and more-involved-in-Georgetown WGTB by the time he graduates.

“It’s tough to get people in leadership roles at the radio,” he says, “so every four years the station is at the point where it’s just good enough to make it another four years. I don’t want to go abroad next year because I feel like there will be no one here.”

The biggest problem facing the station is increasing listeners. But getting listeners for a radio show you cannot hear on the radio is no easy task. That has led to the station being far from students’ minds.

“The radio has had itself together the last few years much better than it was in the ’90s but there is still a disconnect between the radio and the university as a whole,” he says. “In terms of recent goals, it would be nice to be a little more visible on campus and eventually a little more visible in the larger community, which is difficult without [an FM] signal.”

With a newfound and more flexible budget from Late Night Programming, the station has been able to expand the performers it brings to campus, but issues more basic than organizing concerts stand in the way. Just this semester, all the available time slots are filled with shows, and there are always the problems associated with 100 people using the same office with the only supervision being themselves.

Cook hopes that more high-profile campus events make students aware of what WGTB does — or at least that it exists.

Cook hopes the successes of last year’s Girl Talk and Dan Deacon concerts carry over to this year, although he knows the acts WGTB brings to campus ultimately won’t draw crowds quite like Coolio. Cook hopes that iniatives like putting on WGTB playlists in Corp shops and teaming up with the Georgetown Program Board in bringing mainstream acts to campus will help the station get its name out to the greater Georgetown community.

“We’re trying to do more visible things so people say, ‘Cool, the radio will bring in alternative artists,’” he says. “We definitely want as many people as possible to come to our shows, but we will pick artists that don’t serve as the least common denominator.”

And therein lies the contradiction and difficulty in growing the radio station beyond its progressive and indie roots to provide music for everyone.

So, if you’re reading this online, it may be worth tuning in. Or the next time you’re ordering a sandwich at Subway, check out that big window next to Hoya Court. Freed may be able to satisfy any of your lingering curiosity for booty bass.