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On my watch: RIP My extraordinary and pioneering friend Al Primo

On my watch: RIP My extraordinary and pioneering friend Al Primo – 1935-2022

By Anne W. Semmes

In his Old Greenwich office Al Primo sits beside his Gold Circle award presented to him in 2016 by the New York Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, for his 50 years of work in the television industry. Photo by Anne W. Semmes.

If there were a list of Greenwich residents who have changed our world, Al Primo of Old Greenwich would be on it. Newsman Al Primo democratized news gathering in this country with his Eyewitness News. He was first to bring on board the eyes of women and persons of color to report the news. He created the Emmy honored Teen Kids News show still live online across the country, seen for years in countries across the world.

And last Saturday there were Eyewitnesses for sure in the packed memorial service at First Congregational Church, with Geraldo Rivera walking us through how Al persevered his pioneering of Eyewitness News in 1968 on WABC-TV having it rise as the number one TV station in New York. And Al’s lovely daughters, granddaughters and son in law were there to attest to Al’s being such a “peoples” person. Al Primo was the personification of “We the people.”

Back in the early 1980’s Al acquired a newspaper called the “Village Gazette” and had “a lot of fun” with it, giving a voice to those like me in his hometown. My column “Inner View with Anne Groo” (my then married name) ran for a few years as did his, “Eyewitness.” He shared in his 2015 Greenwich Library Oral History “Eyewitness News – Before and After” how his column gave him “an opportunity to learn more of our community and its people.” Touché, Al!

This reporter had the pleasure of writing about Al a couple of times. In 2013 the Swedish Press came to his house to interview him 45 years after he created Eyewitness News. I was invited over to report on that visit. “He’s adjusting his tie,” I write of Al, “a Ralph Laruen model newly bought for the occasion. Ralph Laruen dresses all the kids on his Teen Kids News TV show, he tells.

His Swedish interviewer tells him that the Eyewitness News format is used in Sweden and around the world. “And I’ve worked on every continent except Antarctica,” he adds. He describes the Eyewitness News format used: “It has the shot gun news lead, the weather coming first, the talking between the anchors, the moving camera, and we always have a reporter on the streets.” “How does that feel,” he asks Al, “to have changed the world?”

Al tells of “his first moves in those heady days” [on Channel 7] in New York City, that September, 1968.” “We got those stools out of the studio the cameramen were sitting on – we said everything has got to move. That’s what makes exciting television and intelligent journalism…We created a news family with Eyewitness News, with women and men, and a very diverse group – with the likes of Geraldo Rivera…There were no blacks or ethnics…We had to go look for them.”

“We had reporters reporting on location, and nobody brings a story back without a person in it – we’re going to tell histories of people. That’s what makes the difference – the human drama of broadcast news. I had the first woman anchor on Eyewitness News – the first baby born on TV…We created the shotgun lead that gave one liners to the lead news at the start of the news. I created banter talk between the anchors. The show’s got to be hot – it needs more nuts than sluts.”

Al then addressed Teen Kids News he kicked off in 2003. “Teen Kids News is really necessary. The only thing you hear about teens is sex, rock n’ roll and who’s been arrested. There are teens out there doing remarkable things…We got two 16-year-old twins on the show – they’re gorgeous…We’ve had shows on medical stories, date rape, safe driving.” But he wishes for “a bigger scope for the show. I’d like to see Teen Kids reporters featured on ABC or Fox News,” he says.

That second story on Al I wrote was in 2016, the year The National Academy of Television Arts & Science honored Al as a new inductee of its prestigious Gold Circle for Al’s 50-plus years devoted to the television industry. At the event in New York, his friend Geraldo Rivera introduced him: “The genius of Al was in the gathering of a news team that was truly integrated racially and religiously. He led the drive to integrate local news, to make news teams reflective of the communities they served. It was a monumental achievement. Life was so segregated then.”

In that story Al had also shared his joy that Teen Kids News (TKN) was now being sent out by satellite to 200 plus local TV stations, including 10,000 schools. “We’re thrilled to be doing that,” he told me. “It’s obviously something needed, with schools not teaching current events these days.”
“And now,” he added, “the Department of Defense is sending TKN out to 175 countries in 1,000 locations via the American Forces Network. Every week it goes out to all Navy ships. A lot of the military force are teenagers, or they are living on bases with their families.”

As I wrote then, “If ever there was a true diplomat of democracy, it is [was] Al Primo.

Newsman Al Primo in his early days at Camp David. Contributed photo.
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