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Work We Do: Bruce Tria, WRIV Radio host

Hello, my name is Bruce Tria. I’m the general manager of WRIV radio and I’ve also been known for doing the morning show “The Dawn Patrol” for the last 30 years. I started doing this in 1976. 

A normal day for this radio station begins at about 5:30 or so, when I get here and I start pulling together the news items, weather forecasts, sports scores and getting ready to go on the air at 6 a.m.

No two morning shows are the same. The beauty of this station is that there is always something different about it.

We do solicit phone calls from listeners, we take those. We have elected officials calling in regularly. They’re a very important part of our show. It’s a very local, local, local morning show.

The mornings are fun, let’s be honest about it. It’s the most listened to time on the radio. It’s good for my ego. Anyone who does the morning show in radio does not do it because they like getting up at 4 in the morning. They do it because they have an incredibly huge ego, and it works.

We do a lot of remotes in the summer, too, when we’re out in public talking with people at the Cardboard Boat Race and the Polish fair. Another favorite part is during snow emergencies, because people rely on you, and they’ve always relied on radio for that.

It’s a very intimate media. I approach it like I am talking to one person at a time. You never hear me say “hey, everybody,” because that ruins the mystique. People listen one at a time, they listen individually.

And I want to talk to them individually and communicate with them.

I grew up listening to people like William B. Williams in New York City. They were just fascinating. With William B., it was almost like you were hanging out with the stars and he just brought you into that world and made you part of it.

I just always wanted to be the guy on the radio. It was all I ever wanted to be.

“The Work We Do” is a Riverhead News-Review multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview.