Al Primo, the media executive who is credited for creating the “Eyewitness News” format of television news coverage, died at his home in Old Greenwich on Sept. 29 at the age of 87.
Primo was born in Pittsburgh on July 3, 1935, and entered the media industry in 1953 as a mail boy at WDTV in Pittsburgh. He moved up the ranks at the station and left in 1964 to become news director at KYW-TV in Cleveland.
Primo began the Eyewitness News approach to television news at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in 1965, replacing the traditional newsreader format with a then-new beat-system of going out into the communities to cover the news. Primo also integrated the previously all-white male environment of televised news by hiring women and people and color and by pairing men and women as co-anchors.
Primo became the news director at WABC-TV in New York City in 1968, where he introduced the Eyewitness News format. WABC still refers to its local news broadcast as Eyewitness News.
“They said ”˜it was not journalism”™ and ”˜he”™s using show-business techniques,”™” said Primo about his critics in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer from earlier this year. “And of course, I said, ”˜Yes, that”™s right. This is television, so we use lights, camera, action ”” that”™s what we do.”™ But we do the news, too.”
Primo would later become a news executive at ABC but left in 1976 to pursue consulting work. He was one of the pioneers in news webcasting with the launch of ForeignTV.com in 1999 and in 2002 he created the syndicated Teen Kids News project. He was also one of the original owners of the Cablevision franchise in Fairfield County and helped create News 12 Connecticut.
Outside of television, Primo owned WNVR-AM in the Naugatuck-Waterbury area and was the publisher of The Village Gazette, a weekly Greenwich newspaper.
Photo courtesy of Connecticut SPJ
