by Shirley Zhao shirley.zhao@scmp.com
South China Morning PostToday, 4:33 PM
Senior television journalist Kelvin Tang King-fai, once dubbed as Hong Kong’s “News Prince”, fell to his death the day before Christmas.
Police said officers received a report at 7.12 am on Thursday that a man had fallen from a residential building on Tai Yue Avenue in Tai Koo Shing, Quarry Bay. The man was unconscious when paramedics arrived and he was brought to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
It’s not known if he jumped.
He was identified later as Tang, 51, a senior news anchor for Digital Broadcasting Corporation.
The company’s chief executive, Loh Chan, arrived at Eastern Hospital later in the morning. He said he could not identify the body because he was not Tang’s relative.
He said Tang was supposed to arrive at the office around 7 am and when he failed to turn up, colleagues at first thought he was caught in a traffic jam.
“When he still had not arrived around 8 am, we immediately called him, but we couldn’t find him after many calls,” said Loh. “We then called him more frequently, but later it was a police officer who took the call.”
In October, DBC laid off 60 of its 200 staff and about 30 of the jobs came from the digital radio station’s news department, which had 40 full and part-time employees. DBC’s 24-hour news channel Radio News then became a youth-oriented channel with newscasts only every half hour. The broadcaster, who went on air in 2011, has struggled to find an audience amid boardroom battles and claims of political interference.
Loh said despite the layoffs, Tang was not affected.
He added he went to the hospital immediately after the officer told him about Tang’s fall. About an hour later, officers accompanied Tang’s brother to the hospital and he later confirmed it was Tang’s body.
“We feel it is a loss to us, because he was very talented,” said Loh. “He was a very senior and experienced journalist and he was very disciplined as well.”
Loh said Tang looked normal during the company’s Christmas party on Wednesday, although he still felt a bit uncomfortable because he had caught a cold two weeks ago.
He expected Tang’s wife, who had been on a business trip in Beijing, to return home this afternoon.
Chan Chun-yin, who had his last day in DBC’s newsroom on December 13, said Tang had been very caring to new reporters and taught him a lot about being a professional journalist. He said Tang appeared to be very happy in the office and liked to crack jokes.
“I was really shocked about the news,” said Chan. Many colleagues were unhappy about the news channel’s changes, but Tang did not appear to be especially upset, he recalled.
A spokeswoman for DBC said the company would do its best to help Tang’s family with funeral arrangements and pay his family a death gratuity.
Tang graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism in the 1980s. He joined KTSF Television in San Francisco in the United States after graduation and returned to Hong Kong in 1992 to join Asia Television.
He was a highly popular anchor for the station and a household name during the 1990s. He left ATV in 2000 and joined TVB before going to DBC.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1894490/hong-kong-dbc-news-anchor-falls-his-death-high-rise-building-morning
