Al Primo

Albert T. Primo (born 1935) is a television news executive who was credited with creating the Eyewitness News format.

He was born July 3, 1935 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended North Catholic Boys School and Perry High School,graduating in 1953, the University of Pittsburgh and graduated in 1958.

He began in the business in 1953 as a mail boy at WDTV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, moving up the ranks over 12 years as the station switched dial positions (from channel 3 to channel 2), owners (from the DuMont Television Network to Westinghouse Broadcasting) and call letters (to KDKA-TV), working as news writer, cameraman, reporter, anchorman and news director.

In 1965 he was promoted to News Director Philadelphia's KYW-TV where he launched the Eyewitness News format (the name itself had been used for some years before that by Westinghouse's TV stations for its local newscasts, and in fact was first used by KYW itself in 1959 when it was based in Cleveland, Ohio), and in 1968 he took the format with him to his new job at WABC-TV, the ABC outlet in New York City. He refined the Eyewitness News format at WABC. hiring minority and women reporters whom he placed in prominent positions in the newscast (including the addition of "on-camera exchanges between anchors and on-set reporters which a Chicago media critic dubbed: happy talk"), and the Eyewitness News name and format radiated across the United States from here.

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