Originally mostly funded by the state of Vermont, Vermont ETV began fundraising in the community and developed a substantial audience in the Canadian province of Quebec, which has historically accounted for a significant portion of viewer donations and where a related charity once operated to process Canadian viewers' donations.

[1] The move brought together the 57 full-time VPR employees with 42 at Vermont PBS to create the state's largest news organization, with $90 million in assets.

[4] Its first leader, Scott Finn, stepped down in 2023; a permanent replacement was not hired until Vijay Singh, who had worked in public radio in California, was named in August 2024.

[10][11] In 1975, the network began fundraising from the community, having been initially financed 90 percent by the state and later also receiving federal funds.

[22] On February 17, 2017, Vermont PBS announced that it had sold the WVTA broadcast license for $56 million in the FCC's spectrum auction.

[28][29] Public television in Vermont has had a long history with viewers in Montreal, where its signal is received and widely distributed on cable and has been since April 1968.

[32] In 1989, Vidéotron, one of Montreal's major cable providers, removed Vermont ETV from its channel lineup and replaced it with WCFE in nearby Plattsburgh, New York, to save on copyright fees; at the time, WCFE did not run the entire PBS schedule in order to provide a differentiated service from Vermont ETV.

[36] Download coordinates as: Vermont Public holds three full-service television station licenses, one of which (WVER) is broadcast as a four-site distributed transmission system.

WBTN-FM in Bennington was acquired as part of a package with its AM counterpart, WBTN, in 2000; the AM station briefly simulcast VPR programming with local news inserts and death notices until being sold and returned to commercial use.

[54] In 2004, VPR started WNCH in Norwich, its first dedicated classical music station, and in 2007, it completed its split into two program services.

[56][57] Instead, VPR purchased WAVX, a Christian radio station licensed to Schuyler Falls, New York,[58] and relaunched it as WOXR.

[59][c] When Saint Michael's obtained a low-power station construction permit in 2015, it then sold the high-power WWPV-FM facility to VPR for integration into the classical network as WVTX.

$8 million was raised to finance the addition, which included a newsroom three times the size of the previous space—a converted storage attic—and a studio large enough to accommodate an audience.

[63] A report by VTDigger suggested that the university may not have been legally empowered to sell WWLR without General Assembly consent.

[64] The statute in question was repealed weeks later by governor Phil Scott; in early August, the assembly's Joint Fiscal Committee granted the Vermont State Colleges system, to which Northern Vermont University belonged, retroactive approval to sell WWLR and for the 2019 closure of WIUV at Castleton University.