After publishing FTVLive on Friday, I spent most of the day doing hurricane cleanup, but I would be remiss if I did take the time to mention the passing of Al Primo.

The younger generation of Journalists might have no clue who Al Primo was, but he had a major impact on TV news.

Primo is credited with starting and building the Eyewitness News brand. His idea was to have Reporters be the viewers’ eyewitnesses to what was happening. This was before stations had the ability to go live in the field to Reporters, and if they did, they might only have one to two lives trucks at most. Primo would bring Reporters into the studio and talk to the Anchors and interact with them. This was a first and it didn’t take long for other stations to copy his idea.

He had the idea of the Anchors interacting with each other on the set. There was a day when news Anchors didn’t interact with either the Weather or Sports Anchors. Al Primo changed that. Some critics hated it, they called it “happy talk”, but it wasn’t long before the happy talk was standard at all stations.

Primo started a consulting company and helped take his ideas to TV stations coast to coast.

For better or worse, it was Al Primo that gave us Geraldo Rivera.

Some people cursed Primo, while others applauded him, but all would agree that he changed the industry and the way TV stations covered the news.

Over the years, I had a few lunches or dinners with Al Primo and he was always entertaining.

Al Primo was 87 years old.