Scott MacFarlane is CBS News’ Justice correspondent. He has covered Washington for two decades, earning 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards. His reporting has resulted directly in the passage of five new laws.
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If you glance at advertisements, the billboards or the website too quickly, you might mistake any of them for a campaign banner. The colors and the lettering look familiar. And you’ll certainly recognize the face beneath the cowboy hat.
As soon as President Trump began his second term, a small Fort Myers, Florida country radio station began capitalizing on his return. WHEL radio rebranded itself “Trump Country” 93.7 FM on Inauguration Day. It appears to have briefly tried out the name in late 2020 before dropping the moniker after a couple of months.
The font in the radio station’s logo appears to use the typeface as the Trump-Vance campaign used for its signage. The largest image in the logo is an animated image of the president himself, with his trademark red tie and flag lapel pin, and an uncharacteristic cowboy hat.
Despite public opinion polls showing Mr. Trump with approval ratings under 50% (though among Republicans, he’s over 90%), the general manager of WHEL says “Trump Country” has tripled its ratings among adults 25-54 since March, according to a ratings report shared by the station’s executives. July Nielsen ratings released in August showed WHEL was the second highest-rated country station in the area.
“Trump Country” has high visibility in a part of Florida that can comfortably be described as Trump country, as a result of extensive promotion, including a number of billboards. Mr. Trump won 64% of the vote in 2024 in Lee County, where the radio station is based.
“We didn’t ask for permission,” said Jim Schwartzel, the radio outlet’s president and general manager. “But I don’t think that the president or anybody else would really be upset by it. We looked at it as comedy.”
The Trump campaign for years tried to weed out fake merchandise and theft of Mr. Trump’s name, image and likeness, but found it was expensive and difficult to stop completely.
Schwartzel, a longtime media executive in Florida, is seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. House seat held by Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running for governor.
Schwartzel told CBS News he believes his radio station’s slogan, moniker and promotion are unique in American broadcasting and show the power of Trump’s brand in commercial media. The station’s slogan is “Make Country Great Again.”
Trump references saturate the station’s airwaves, too. In between a rotation of current country hits, including Luke Combs’ “Back in the Saddle,” Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” and Luke Bryan’s “One Margarita,” the station uses a voice actor to impersonate Mr. Trump’s voice on some of its station promotions and imaging, which reference local roads, communities and shopping.
In one recent promotion, the voice actor impersonating Mr. Trump announced the radio station’s “Deportation a day” campaign, which offered cruises to Mexico for listeners. The on-air promotions used the Trump voice actor and a voice actor with a young Hispanic male voice to pitch the trips and compare them mockingly to deportations. The Trump voice refers to trips across the “Gulf of America,” while the Hispanic male voice counters that it’s the “Gulf of Mexico.”
Schwartzel’s campaign site touts his “conservative values” and says he is running for Congress “to give President Donald J. Trump the support he needs.”
Schwartzel told CBS News, “We don’t talk about the politics of deportations, but we twisted it to be entertaining.” He said he decided to name his radio station after Mr. Trump months before launching a campaign for Congress. He said he does not appear or broadcast on the station because of his candidacy, so that he can avoid a requirement that he offer other candidates equal time under federal law.
The use of Mr. Trump’s name on the radio station carries some risk of alienating potential listeners and customers, some of whom already hear quite a bit of his voice on other stations and media platforms. Some of the station’s on-air promotion features the Trump impersonator talking dismissively about things that are “woke” and touting being a “builder.”
An increasingly saturated media and music environment is pushing radio stations to try bolder, controversial efforts to lure , or even salvage , listeners.
Don Tanner, a radio industry expert and founding co-partner of Tanner-Friedman Strategic Communications in Michigan, said WHEL-FM radio’s experiment is part of the radio industry’s effort to remain relevant.
“You have to differentiate in radio,” Tanner said. “There are so many competitors out there for eyes and ears. Especially in music, where country music fans can go to Spotify or Apple to listen.”
Tanner, who authored the book “No Static at All — A behind the scenes journey through radio and pop music,” told CBS News that creative radio branding is a common technique to attract an audience: “This type of format is attempting to do just that.”
Representatives for Mr. Trump declined to comment.
Though Schwartzel said his radio station avoids political topics, the station has conducted promotional events at local Republican club events, he said. Schwartzel said the idea to attempt the Trump branding occurred to him while watching the Trump “boat parades” in Florida, where Trump banners, flags and signage were being displayed and celebrated.
The Florida Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.
