LI Radio: Rusty Potz Sign-Off At WLNG 92.1 FM

Rusty Potz

Longtime WLNG 92.1 FM personality Rusty Potz has retired and moved from Sag Harbor to Sarasota, Florida.

According to 27east.com, co-workers at the oldie station, local officials and members of the media looked on last Friday as Potz, the voice of 92.1 FM for nearly 40 years, signed off from his afternoon radio show for the last time with a final, bittersweet ring of the bronze bell, his family not far from his side.

“Hey, folks, it’s been great,” he said, “and God bless you.”

Potz, who will celebrate his 72nd birthday in July, began his radio career started in 1963, reading on-air reports about bad road conditions for his employer, American Automobile Association. That was back in his native Connecticut, where he went by his given name, Robert Potz. He landed his first full-time gig at a station in Windsor, CT that same year, working part-time for 18 other stations in Connecticut and Massachusetts over the next decade. At one point, he worked for four stations at once.

In 1966, after using several different names on the radio—“Big Bob Russell” and “Bob Ryan” were just two—he dubbed himself Rusty Potz, because, as he puts it, his actual name wasn’t particularly memorable. “Who could remember Bob?” he said. “Rusty Potz goes together.”

He finally settled down in 1975, when Paul Sidney, the late WLNG president, hired him and gave him his own show, which, up until Friday, aired on weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

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