Al Primo

Albert Thomas Primo (born 1935) is a television news executive who was credited with creating the Eyewitness News format. More than a hundred markets have taken the Eyewitness News name to label their own featured local newscasts and others are using Primo's concept under different names for their own formats. "Eyewitness News was the first newscast to put [news] reporters on the set," which Primo states in his biographical book, Eyewitness Newsman . The New York Daily News described Primo as the man "who almost single-handedly changed the face of broadcast journalism." Station newscasts were only 15 minutes long and he supervised the transition to thirty minute programs. As part of the expansion, Marie Torre, of the New York Herald Tribune was hired. Primo trained her and she became one of the first women in broadcasting to write, report, and anchor a newscast.