In the the modern world of television it is easy to get lost in a sea of streaming platforms, suited executives and 21st century technology.

But in the olden days - or the golden days, if you were lucky enough to have lived in them - it looked more like the wild west, with dirt under the heels, tape recorders, spools of actual film and reporter-producers who were more cowboy than corporate.

Peter Luck at home in Balmain in 1996. Luck has died, aged 73. Credit:Jessica Hromas

The journalist Peter Luck, who died today, aged 73, was one of those cowboys, a reporter who built his reputation in a world where the field of journalism was sometimes as lawless as the personalities on which it aspired to shine a light.

In the late 1960s, during the social and technological revolution, Luck stepped into the limelight as a reporter on This Day Tonight, the ABC's then-flagship current affairs program.