Courtney Cutting has listened to the local radio stations around her hometown of St. Johnsbury, Vt., for as long as she can remember. Her listening hit a stride two summers ago, she said, when flood damage shuttered the diner she worked at, putting her out of a job.
But last month, Cutting noticed a change on the airwaves. The newscasts that her favorite station — WMTK “The Notch” — played at the top of the hour, and which she relied on for national and international news, sounded different.
“When it would come on, I would turn up the radio to be like, ‘What am I hearing?’ Cutting said in an interview. “And then that’s when I got the end tagline, which is, ‘America’s listening to Fox News.’”
“The Notch” is one of seven stations based in the area where Cutting grew up that are now owned and operated by Essex County Republican Sen. Russ Ingalls. The Newport, Vt., real estate broker purchased the media group earlier this year in a $1 million deal with longtime local broadcaster Bruce James. The stations, which air different types of music and some sports and talk programs, broadcast throughout the district Ingalls serves in the Senate.
Cutting emailed Ingalls to ask about the change, and when the senator replied, it confirmed what she had suspected for weeks: While the seven stations previously aired news from a mix of sources, he had switched all of the broadcasts, solely, to Fox News. Ingalls told VtDigger that, before the change in early August, the stations played news from either the Associated Press or the major broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC.
Cutting wrote back, in an exchange she shared with VtDigger, that the switch had left her frustrated. To her ears, she wrote to Ingalls, the Fox newscasts offered scant context about the many controversial actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent months, and often lacked the perspectives of people who opposed them.
Ingalls contended in response that the reaction he’d received from listeners after changing the newscasts had been overwhelmingly positive. He told VtDigger he had received more than 1,400 supportive messages from local residents since he made the change, while he’d so far had only “two confirmed emails of dissatisfaction.”
“I’m sorry that you don’t like the president,” Ingalls wrote to Cutting. “I didn’t like the last one much but he was still the president. I don’t know what I can tell you that will help you other than it was a good business decision based on what we are hearing.”
The stations Ingalls operates include WMOO “Moo 92,” JJ Country and WIKE “The Notch” in Newport; Magic 97.7, Kix 105.5 and WSTJ out of the St. Johnsbury area; as well as WMTK “The Notch” in Littleton, N.H.
Earlier this year, as he was starting to operate the local radio group, the senator told VtDigger he did not want to make the stations’ content more political — even as he, himself, is one of the area’s most recognizable politicians. In an interview this week, he contended he was motivated to change the newscasts not by his conservative politics, but by the repeated requests he heard from listeners to “do something about the news.”
None of those listeners specifically asked for a change to Fox News, Ingalls said. He settled on that network because people were asking for more “positive” stories about the country, he continued, something he believes Fox News provides. He said he’s frustrated by “negative” news coverage of Trump in mainstream news sources.
“Just because CBS, ABC, NBC and AP hate Trump doesn’t mean that the rest of America does. I mean, he’s our president,” Ingalls said. “I was tired of the negativity that was coming from all those other news sources. That’s not what my stations are about. That’s not what Russ Ingalls is about. It’s not … how I run my businesses. I like cohesiveness. I like people getting along and being together.”
He contended, too, that the decision had nothing to do with supporting Trump.
“I don’t give two shits about Trump. I really don’t. But it’s the country in itself — this country is doing very, very well. It really, really is. It’s a great nation,” he said. “I want a news source that’s going to report and reflect (that) accurately.”
Fox News’ radio programming is syndicated to about 1,500 stations across the country, according to a company press release. The network frequently features pro-Trump opinion hosts; the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has her own program on the network.
In 2021, Fox News was sued by the voting equipment manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems over claims the network’s hosts had knowingly peddled falsehoods that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election so Trump would lose. The news giant later agreed to pay about $790 million in damages to resolve the case.
Ingalls is well-known as one of the Vermont Senate’s most conservative voices. He faced criticism from the state’s Democratic Party in April when he was one of a handful of members of the chamber to vote against a resolution condemning the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student activist, by masked federal immigration agents in Colchester. The Columbia University student, who was a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, was later ordered released by a federal judge.
To be sure, Ingalls also represents some of the state’s most politically conservative areas. In Essex County, which makes up most of his district, 55% of voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, compared to 33% on average statewide.
Cutting, the longtime radio listener, said there are other changes Ingalls has made to the stations’ content that she likes. She said she’s noticed more spotlights on local businesses — “that is a wicked cool idea” — and regular on-air listings of community events. There’s even a show Ingalls hosts himself that “I just love to listen to,” she said.
“I really stand behind the way he wants to use it in building community, and making it a forum to foster these kinds of conversations,” Cutting said of the radio network.
“We need to be informed and have hard conversations as a community,” she said — but added that if “all of these radio stations go to one news source that isn’t reporting the full breadth of the news, then, what’s there going to be to talk about?”
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.