The Day My City Wept
The Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup and there’s a vibe shift in my hometown of Raleigh, NC we should never lose. People are smiling at strangers. Car horns aren’t expressing frustration, they’re celebrating. Social media isn’t filled with arguments.
People are weeping with happiness, and radio needs to create that local pride every day.
People who have nothing else in common are connected by a shared feeling. The Carolina Hurricanes were celebrated with a parade 150,000 people attended. They didn’t just win the Cup. They reminded an entire community what it feels like to be part of something bigger than themselves. Everyone has new best friends.
My message in this week’s Planet Reynolds is that radio has the power to do that every day.
Often, we see ourselves in the entertainment business. And most days we are. But we’re also in the belief business. Think of that big service project you did to support a cause important to you. You had to move fans into the belief business to get that done.
Every day, we decide what matters. We help listeners choose what to care about. We help shape how they feel about where they live. If we spend hours every day talking about what’s broken, we’re teaching the audience what to believe about the community.
But if we spend hours every day celebrating local people, local victories, local traditions, and local pride, we’re teaching them something else. We’re teaching them that this is a place worth loving.
I live in a market with Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State. We have seen championships before. But this one was different. It bonded the community like nothing I’ve seen in my decades here.
Often these feelings of joy live for a short while. A team wins, you celebrate, then a few days later it dissipates. I wonder what it would be like for all of us to make a longer-term commitment to celebrating where we live.
The negativity industry is thriving. Algorithms reward outrage. Cable news loves division. Social media radiates conflict. Everywhere we go, someone or something is telling us what should make us angry.
Radio has an opportunity to do something different, because you control how listeners feel by what you do. There might be problems, but there are also victories. Yes, there’s conflict, but there’s also kindness. There certainly is division, but there’s also community.
Sometimes the most rebellious thing a personality can do is make people feel hopeful. It’s like running in the opposite direction from everything else we experience.
No one can tell the story of your town better than you. Nobody can celebrate local heroes better than you. Nobody can create pride in your community better than you. This is not about putting on your show a Thursday feature called Hometown Heroes and ticking that box. It’s about making a wholesale change in your content to always be the champions of your city. A vibe that permeates everything.
When the Hurricanes won, the great radio stations of Raleigh didn’t just report it. They amplified what it meant to be a community experience. When they won 20 years ago, the celebration was them parading in the parking lot of the arena where they played (true!). When the Hartford Whalers moved here 30 years ago, they said hockey wouldn’t work in the south. This time, 150,000 showed up to the streets of downtown Raleigh to express their love for what the team did for us. And the team responded in kind.
The best personalities become the emotional mayors of their communities. They celebrate what deserves celebrating. They shine a bright spotlight on those who make a difference. They create moments where listeners feel connected to one another. They don’t tune in just for a laugh, but because they’re desperately in search of something that makes them feel good about where they live. You can help them see their hometown through a better lens.
Do you need a winning team like we have in Raleigh or in New York when the Knicks won? Nope, you just need to access the passion you have for your town, then make that content commitment to your fans.
If we committed to making daily moments of civic pride, what might that be like? One story, one local hero, one example of generosity, one reason to feel grateful. Imagine the cumulative effect if you did that five days a week, 52 weeks a year. Not just to build ratings and revenue. But to build belief. Because when people feel connected to their community, they become happier citizens, better neighbors, and more engaged participants in local life. And if you did that, how might you be celebrated?
Build that community and radio becomes more than a source for content. It becomes an epicenter for connection.
The roar coming from Raleigh wasn’t really about hockey. It was about identity, it was about belonging, and it was about thousands of people sharing the same feeling at the same time. That’s why we wept.
Radio has always possessed that same superpower. The question isn’t whether we can create those moments. The question is whether we’ll become intentional enough to use them.
Because in a world that’s constantly telling people what’s wrong, great talent can still remind them what’s right. And that might be the most important job we have.
You game?