Vermont Public (fictional)

Vermont Public is the public broadcasting state network in Vermont. It is owned by the University of Vermont that holds the licenses for all of the PBS and NPR member stations in the state.
==History== 
The television service was established by an act of the Vermont General Assembly in 1966 as Vermont Educational Television (Vermont ETV), a service operated by the University of Vermont on behalf of all educational interests in the state. This culminated six years of efforts to set up the service, including two defeats in the 1963 and 1965 sessions of the General Assembly. Broadcasting began on October 16, 1967, from WEEA (channel 34) atop Mount Mansfield. Three more transmitters went on air in the months that followed: WVTX (channel 20) on Burke Mountain serving St. Johnsbury, WVTA (channel 41) on Mount Ascutney to serve Windsor and southern Vermont, and WVER, broadcasting from Grandpa's Knob to serve Rutland.Delays in completing WVTA, which did not start until March 18, 1968, also held up the activation of WVER.
In 1975, the network began fundraising from the community, having been initially financed 90 percent by the state and later also receiving federal funds. 1979 saw Vermont ETV endure a 57-day strike by production personnel; the next year, the St. Johnsbury and Rutland transmitters narrowly avoided closure when the university voted to allow the installation of remote control equipment, allowing operators to control the facilities from the Mount Ascutney site.
The 1989 session of the General Assembly authorized Vermont ETV's separation from the university. However, funding continued to be a concern. 
In 1996, the Vermont Senate Appropriations Committee proposed cutting ETV's state funding to $1; it eventually was able to restore some of its allocation but still lost about half of its state grant. This was in contrast to Vermont Public Radio, which was not funded by the state and had more corporate contributors.
In 1997, Vermont ETV began 24-hour broadcasting; the name was changed to Vermont Public Television on January 1, 1998, and again to Vermont PBS in 2014. 
On February 17, 2009, the four main Vermont Public Television transmitters converted to digital broadcasting; in converting early, they joined most of the state's major commercial stations.
On February 17, 2017, Vermont PBS announced that it had sold the WVTA broadcast license for $56 million in the FCC's spectrum auction. In a statement, the network said that its other signals would be upgraded to cover the area served by WVTA.The WVTA license, which continued on the WVER multiplex, was then surrendered for cancellation on November 23, 2022. $52 million of the auction proceeds constitute the vast majority of Vermont Public's endowment, which stood at $71.9 million in 2021.
Shortly before the merger with Vermont Public Radio, Vermont PBS relocated from Fort Ethan Allen, where the two organizations were nearby, to facilities in Winooski.
==Support in Canada==
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. The large audience in Greater Montreal has been a major source of donations: in 1979, Vermont ETV received 60 percent of its donations from Quebec.
In 1989, Vidéotron, one of Montreal's major cable providers, removed Vermont ETV from its channel lineup and replaced with WPLE in nearby Plattsburgh, New York, to save on copyright fees; at the time, WPLE did not run the entire PBS schedule in order to provide a differentiated service from Vermont ETV. However, the move threatened the financial viability of Vermont ETV because, at the time, 15,000 of the 40,000 Vermont ETV contributors were Montreal-area Vidéotron customers who represented 25 percent of the network's fundraising revenue. Donations to Vermont ETV's March 1990 fundraising drive fell 27 percent. Vidéotron restored Vermont ETV to its lineup in 1991 after a year's absence.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) revoked the status of the Public Television Association of Quebec, a charitable organization in Canada that had supported Vermont PBS's Canadian efforts. The CRA decision was unsuccessfully appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal, which ruled in 2015 that the association had "failed to maintain direction and control over its resources as it did not devote all its resources to its own charitable activities" and was only used to generate charitable tax receipts for Canadian donors
==Vermont Public television stations== 
The Vermont Public stations are: 
Station	City of License	Channel	First Air Date
WEEA 	Burlington 	34 	October 16, 1967
WGLY 	Montpelier 	34 	January 1, 1968
WKKI 	Essex Junction 	9 	April 18, 1980
WNMS 	Walton 	10 	November 10, 1970
==Logo History== 
 
WEEA 1967.png|Vermont Educational Television logo 1967-1976 
WEEA 1991 station ident.png|Vermont ETV from 1976-1998 
WEEALogo1998.png|Vermont Public Television logo from 1998–2014 
WEEA 2014.png|Vermont PBS logo from 2014-2020 
WEEA 2020.png|Vermont PBS logo from 2020–2022 
Vermont-public-radio-vermont-pbs-logo.png|Vermont Public logo from 2021-present 
 
==Gallery== 
 
WEEA Arthur bumper 2004.png|VPT PBS Kids Arthur bumper from 2004 
 
==Navigational Templates==
 
 
Category:PBS member stations 
Category:PBS Kids member stations 
Category:Former NET affiliates 
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1967 
Category:Burlington, Vermont
Category:Vermont
Category:Walton
Category:Montpellier
Category:Essex Junction, VT