Star Awards

Star Awards (Chinese: 红星大奖) are awards for artistic and technical merit where Mediacorp recognises entertainers under their employment for outstanding performances of the year.

The awards are given annually in a ceremony. The various category winners are awarded a trophy, with initial designs featuring various star shapes. The star was subsequently removed and the trophy is designed as an S-shaped column, depicting the star.

History
The first Star Awards presentation was held on 26 February 1994, took place at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre with an audience of about 500 people. There have no other pre-show and post-awards ceremony held in that year. Winners were announced during the presentation of the ceremony, the ceremony also presented a popularity contest, with Li Nanxing, Chew Chor Meng and Zoe Tay winning the Most Popular Actor and Actress award, respectively. The first Best Drama Serial was only awarded during the third Awards in 1996 to Tofu Street for an outstanding overall performance. The nominees are determined by a team of judges employed by Mediacorp and winners are selected by a majority vote from the entire judging panel. Chew Chor Meng, Li Nanxing, Terence Cao, Sean Say, Desmond Sim, Chen Liping, Chen Xiuhuan, Pan Lingling, Aileen Tan, and Zoe Tay received the award as the 10 Most Popular Artistes, with five awards given to male and female artistes; these artistes were awarded by popularity among the television audience based from the public via telephone and SMS text voting. Since 1997, the number of recipients for each category were expanded to ten.

Institutions and milestones
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1994–2010s

 * Fann Wong was the first Best Actress recipient for her role in "Chronicle of Life,"(Chinese: 缘尽今生) marking her as the inaugural awardee since the award's introduction in 1995.


 * Li Nanxing received an award for his performance in "Wounded Tracks," (Chinese: 伤城记) honoring his outstanding leading role, while Zhu Xiufeng was recognized for her supporting role in the drama "Chronicle of Life,"(Chinese: 缘尽今生).


 * Special Acheievement Award, given between 1995 and 2003, honored artistes for their significant contributions, later revived in 2018 with Marcus Chin as the recipient.


 * The recent award in 2022 and 2023 ends with the Best Actor and Actress award, but recent ceremonies' last award would be Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes award, a popularity contest open for all nominated Mediacorp Artistes.


 * Variety categories were introduced in the 1998 ceremony, expanding eligibility to include variety programs and their artistes.


 * All-Time Favourite Artiste replaced the Special Acheievement Award in 2004 ceremony, honoring artistes who won the Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artiste awards ten times.


 * Ceremonies were held annually in April to celebrate television talents from the previous year, with changes in scheduling over the years.

2010–2020s

 * 2010 ceremony introduced new awards like Favourite Male Character and Female Characters and the Rocket Award, focusing on artistes' contributions and improvement.


 * 20th Star Awards ceremony in 2014 introduced the Social Media Award and The Most Popular Regional Artiste Award. 2014 saw revisions in award category quotas, affecting the presentation of certain awards like Best News Presenter and Best Newcomer.


 * 2015 ceremonies marked the last time they were held at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre before moving to the Mediacorp campus. During Show 1 of the presentation, Jeanette Aw emerged as a major winner, securing victories across the majority of categories that night.


 * 2016 ceremony saw changes in award presentation and the last occurrence of online Favourite award categories and the first cremeony which introduced the Best Evergreen Artiste Award. A new category, 'Best Programme Host', was created with a merger of two hosting awards (Best Variety Show Host and Best Info-Ed Programme Host) due to a similar presentation style in both the variety and info-ed programmes, as well as similar eligibility criteria. Regrettably, the technical categories moves to backstage during the proceedings of the year 2016. Consequently, these significant aspects of the event were omitted from the broadcast, limiting the recognition and appreciation of the technical excellence displayed by the nominees and winners in their respective fields.


 * At the 2017 ceremony, online voting categories were also streamlined, by putting more emphasis placed on the Top 10 Most Popular Artiste awards, while the Favourite Male and Female Character, and Favourite Onscreen Couple awards, as well as Social Media Award were dropped due to the change. Due to the switch in measuring television viewership, the Top Rated Variety Programme and Top Rated Drama Serial awards were also suspended.


 * The 2018 ceremony saw revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards, whereas a poll of 1,000 people representing a wide demographic across Singapore's population, were conducted independently by an accredited market research company, will be used to shortlist the nominations. The results of the poll weighed 50% towards the combined total, while the other 50% comes from the public vote (with 50% weighed on telepoll and online votes each). Eligibility criteria for performance and popularity categories were also revised, opening up to non-Mediacorp artistes; eligible artistes were now required to lead a role in a programme or play as a supporting role/assistant host in at least three eligible programmes or at least 30 episodes out of all eligible programmes, whichever applicable. Best Evergreen Artiste were also accessed on veteran artistes based on a full calendar year, as opposed to a single programme.


 * The 2019 ceremony, coinciding the silver jubilee of the ceremony on 14 April 2019, introduced two categories to feature miniseries, which were the Best Short-form Drama Serial and Best Short-form Variety Programme.

2020–present

 * The 2021 ceremony, initially announced to be held on 26 April 2020 and announced that the event is postponed to the second half of 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, making it the first ceremony in 13 years since the revision of the eligibility period in 2008 where the ceremony would not be held on the month of April; On 7 August 2020, the ceremony was pushed to 18 April 2021 and expanding the eligibility to include 2020 programs, resulting in the increase of nominations for most of the award categories, from the traditional five to seven. The ceremony also introduces radio awards coinciding the 85th anniversary of radio broadcasting in Singapore. For the first time since 2014, the award ceremony was announced to be held outside studios, located on the Jewel Changi Airport and Terminal 4.


 * The 2022 ceremony brought back the popularity awards that were discontinued during the earlier awards. They were introduced as MyPick! Awards and the awards were presented in the backstage livestream instead of the Main ceremony.


 * The 2023 ceremony saw introductions of the Most Popular Rising Star award and revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards. Nominees are no longer shortlisted into the Top 40 nominees, instead they are eligible as long as they have acted in a Lead role or main host in an eligible programme or a Supporting role or episodic host in 3 eligible programme/30 episodes in total across all eligible programme, while having more than 5 years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting experience before the award ceremony, Most Popular Rising Star have similar requirements, but they can be nominated with being a Supporting role or episodic host in a single eligible programme, while having 5 or less years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting (excluding cameo appearances/experiences before turning 18 years of age), and being 18 years and above to be nominated.


 * Star Awards 2024 marks the removal of the Best Evergreen Artiste Award by Mediacorp, and believes that artistic excellence transcends age. As a result, Veteran artistes are now valued based on their contributions across various acting and program categories in the nominations. Additionally, Mediacorp introduced a new category during this year's awards ceremony: "Best Audio Personality," aimed at recognizing outstanding hosts in the audio industry. This initiative aims to provide greater opportunities for DJs and audio presenters to participate and be acknowledged for their contributions.

The last 2 awards at Star Awards 2022 were the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards instead of the Top 10 Awards. Previously, technical category awards (e.g. Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Variety Show Producer, etc.), newscaster and current affairs awards and, for a time, the Young Talent Award (for child actors) were held separately at a gala dinner (or afternoon conference) due to time constraints and results and clips from the event would be shown either during the ceremony, or live-streaming before the ceremony. Between 2010 and 2015, and again in 2017, those technical awards were presented in Show 1 (or during the three prelude episodes, in 2017), while the Show 2 presented the main awards. Since 2016 (with the exception for 2017), the format was reverted with the technical category awards presented at an off-site ceremony. In accordance to the social distancing measures, the ceremony is conducted closed-doors, and international celebrities communicate via teleconference due to travel restrictions.


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Theme Tune
Since 1995, the signature theme tune titled "Linking the World", composed by Christopher Evans. It was subsequently modified to have different renditions of the same tune for subsequent ceremonies.

Since 2019, the original theme tune was re-composed as "Starlight" 《星光》, with a new rendition and lyrics. This new rendition was used as the opener for the ceremony since 2021.

Trophy
Since its establishment in 1994, the Star Awards trophy has undergone four different designs:


 * 1994: The trophy featured a transparent column topped with a silver, multi-faceted star.
 * 1995 to 1997: The trophy consisted of a column topped with a gold star.
 * 1998 to 1999: The trophy took on a conical shape with a large star.
 * 2000 to present: Designed in Shanghai, each trophy weighs 4 kilograms and is valued at $1000. Its design is formed by the crystalline shape of the letter "S," which, when viewed from another angle, resembles the letter "A," forming the abbreviation for "Star Awards." The trophy's color varies each year (green, purple, gold, brown, blue, etc.).

Lists of award ceremonies
To date, 29 ceremonies were held, as summarised below:

Ceremony hosts
The following individuals have hosted the Star Awards ceremony.

Telecast
The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, commonly in April following the relevant calendar year in order to focus on the full calendar year; prior to the 2007 ceremony, the ceremony were held at the end of the year (usually December) while there is no ceremony in 2008 due to a format change.

2007 was the first ceremony to have a double ceremony, one that paid tribute to the 25th Anniversary of television, and a second ceremony being the normal ceremony. Between 2010 and 2015, the Professional and Technical awards (given out to backstage crew and scriptwriters) were telecast and presented in the first show, and the main awards on the second, airing the following week. While the first show was still held at Mediacorp TV Theatre, the second show was, for the third time in Star Awards history, being held on the new location of Resorts World Sentosa, after 1996 and 2006. Both of the ceremonies were broadcast live on 18 and 25 April 2010. The post-show was held after the second ceremony at 10pm on Channel U.

In 2016, although the show was a two-part program, the technical awards was, for the first time since 2009, presented in an off-site non-televised presentation instead of being presented live in show 1. In their place, the main ceremony (which was presented in show 2) was also split into two shows, allowing to put more emphasis on mostly variety/info-ed award categories and drama award categories, for shows 1 and 2, respectively. The Post-show Party, airing after show 2, focuses on online voting award categories. For the first time in Star Awards history, the awards for the Top 10 Artistes were presented in separate shows instead of single show, with the female artistes awarded in show 1, and the male artistes on show 2.

At the 2017 ceremony, in a gap of eight installments since 2009, the ceremony was reverted to one show, and the post-show party was scrapped. In-lieu of the "3+1" change, a three-episode weekly preludes aired on Sundays before the main ceremony. The preludes were removed in 2018.

With the merger of Mediacorp with SPH MediaWorks on 1 January 2005, nominees now include artistes and shows from Mediacorp Channel U, formerly MediaWork's Chinese language channel, and were broadcast for said channel since. Between 2010 and 2014, xinmsn provided its first online Live streaming for both the ceremony as well as backstage, and since 2013, Toggle (both the website and the smartphone/smart TV application). However, these streams were only viewable exclusive to Singapore. Starting from the 2019 ceremony, the awards are also livestreamed on YouTube, and is viewable to the world.

Venues
In 1994, the first Star Awards were presented at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre and the following year until 2015; however, seven ceremonies were held outside the studios: in 1996, the venue of Star Awards changed to World Trade Centre, Harbour Pavilion and was hosted by Guo Liang and Yvette Tsui. In 2006, the ceremony was held at St James Power Station, near VivoCity and Sentosa. Between 2010 and 2014, the ceremony was also held outside location while the show was split into two, with the first show held at Caldecott Hill, while the second show was held at Resorts World Sentosa (2010 and 2011), Marina Bay Sands (2012 and 2013) and Suntec City (2014).

In 2016, the awards had since held at the new Mediacorp Campus, MES Theatre @ Mediacorp, and it became the presentation's current venue with incredibly spacious interior and stunning architectural designs, the 1,500-seater performance venue features tiered seating in its stalls and two circle levels, including removable seats at the lower stall and additional audience sitting space at the orchestra pit for people with special needs. However, two other ceremonies that are held outside the studios, making the tradition of holding the ceremonies outside the studios being brought back after a 9 year hiatus and 5 years after the new theatre was opened. The 2021 was held in Jewel Changi Airport and Changi Airport Terminal 4 while the 2023 ceremony was held in Marina Bay Sands for the third time, after 10 years.

Popularity categories
Technical Awards As of 2018, only four technical awards were presented during off-site ceremony.


 * Best Screenplay
 * Best Variety Producer
 * Best Director
 * Best Variety Research Writer

Discontinued or suspended awards
One-time Awards


 * 40th Anniversary Evergreen Achievement Award (Awarded only in 2003)
 * Talented Artiste Award 多才多艺红星奖 (Awarded only in 2004)
 * Honorary TV Award (Awarded only in 2013)
 * Perfect Combo (Awarded only in 2022)
 * Most Attention Seeking New-Gen Host (Awarded only in 2022)

Technical Awards Note: All the categories were introduced in 1998 (unless otherwise stated), and these awards were presented outside broadcast except for 2010–2015, where it was presented on one show.

Retired awards
A number of awards have either suspended or retired throughout the years, including some that have been replaced by similar award categories in other areas of recognition:

Suspended Awards

Records
As of 2024:

Overall wins/nominations by a performer, program, etc.

 * Most wins by a drama serial in a single year
 * The Dream Makers II 志在四方 II – 12


 * Most nominations by a drama serial in a single year
 * The Dream Makers II 志在四方 II – 16


 * Drama series with all five wins in acting categories:
 * Holland V 荷兰村 and The Dream Makers II 志在四方 II


 * Most Best Actor wins
 * Chen Hanwei 陈汉玮 – 7


 * Most Best Actress wins
 * Huang Biren 黃碧仁 – 5


 * Most Best Actor nominations
 * Christopher Lee 李铭顺 – 14


 * Most Best Actress nominations
 * Zoe Tay 郑惠玉 – 14


 * Most Best Supporting Actor wins
 * Huang Yiliang 黄奕良 – 3


 * Most Best Supporting Actress wins
 * Xiang Yun 向云 – 5


 * Most Best Supporting Actor nominations
 * Chen Shucheng 陈澍城 – 10


 * Most Best Supporting Actress nominations
 * Xiang Yun 向云 – 11


 * Most Young Talent wins
 * Regene Lim 林咏谊 – 3


 * Artist with Most Theme Song wins
 * Kelvin Tan 陈伟联 – 4


 * Artist with Most Theme Song nominations
 * Fann Wong 范文芳 – 6


 * Most wins by a variety/info-ad programme in a single year
 * Love On A Plate 名厨出走记 – 4


 * Most nominations by variety/info-ad programme in a single year
 * Black Rose 爆料黑玫瑰 – 7


 * Most wins for a Variety Programme
 * City Beat 城人杂志, The Joy Truck 快乐速递, Say It If You Dare 有话好好说 and GeTai Challenge 歌台星力量 – 2


 * Most nominations for a Variety Programme
 * City Beat 城人杂志 – 6


 * Most wins for an Info-ad Programme
 * Tuesday Report 星期二特写 – 5


 * Most nominations for an Info-ad Programme
 * Tuesday Report 星期二特写 – 22


 * Most wins for a Variety Special
 * Star Awards 红星大奖 – 9


 * Most nominations for a Variety Special
 * Star Awards 红星大奖 – 22


 * Most Variety Show Host wins (programme hosts exclusive)
 * Sharon Au 欧菁仙, Mark Lee 李国煌 and Kym Ng 鐘琴 – 4


 * Most Variety Show Host wins (programme hosts inclusive)
 * Quan Yi Fong 权怡凤 – 8


 * Most Variety Show Host nominations (programme hosts inclusive)
 * Mark Lee 李国煌, Kym Ng 鐘琴 – 9


 * Most Info-Ed Programme Host wins
 * Belinda Lee 李心钰 – 2


 * Most Info-Ed Programme Host nominations
 * Guo Liang 郭亮, Bryan Wong 王禄江 – 5


 * All-time Favourite Artistes with ten consecutive Top 10 Most Popular Artistes awards
 * Zoe Tay 郑惠玉, Li Nanxing 李南星, Chew Chor Meng 周初明, Xie Shaoguang 谢韶光, Fann Wong 范文芳, Xiang Yun 向云, Rui En 瑞恩, Elvin Ng 黄俊雄 and Rebecca Lim 林慧玲

Awards and nominations
Star Awards had been nominated for 16 times since the Best Variety Special category was introduced in 1998 (with the exceptions for five shows, the award was not presented in years 2000 and 2018; while the ceremony were not nominated in years 1999, 2001 and 2006). As of 2021, eight shows, out of the total 22 ceremonies since 1997 were won, with their first win in 2007 which was awarded for the 2006's ceremony. Other categories for Star Awards, which were nominated or won, were also reflected in the table:

undefined Each year is linked to the article about the Star Awards held that year.