Star Awards 2012

Star Awards 2012 (Chinese: 红星大奖 2012) was a double television award ceremony held in Singapore. It is part of the annual Star Awards organised by MediaCorp for the two free-to-air channels, MediaCorp Channel 8 and MediaCorp Channel U. Star Awards 2012 was live broadcast on Channel 8, on 22 and 29 April 2012, and the Post-Show party on Channel U after the broadcast of the second award ceremony.

Similar to the preceding ceremonies since 2010, the ceremony was split into two separate shows. The first show, titled 光辉大赏 (lit. Glorious Showcase), which focused on Professional and technical awards (which was given out to backstage crew and scriptwriters) as well as showcasing various drama skits to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Chinese Drama Serials. The second show, titled 颁奖礼 (lit. Award Showcase), was held at the Grand Ballroom in Marina Bay Sands, which focused on main category awards honoring the television series of 2011-12. The first show were hosted by entertainment artistes Dasmond Koh, Michelle Chia, Lee Teng and Vivian Lai, while the second show were hosted by Guo Liang and Taiwanese singer-actress Bowie Tsang.

A Tale of 2 Cities, Love Thy Neighbour and the 2011's remake of the 1987's drama On the Fringe, the latter tying with Devotion for having the most nominations with 12, were tied with the most wins for the ceremony with three for all three series; A Tale of 2 Cities won Favourite Female Character Award on Show 1, and Best Actress and Best Newcomer on Show 2; Love Thy Neighbour won Young Talent and Top Rated Drama Programme awards in Show 1 and Best Supporting Actress in Show 2; the remake won Best Screenplay and Best Drama Editing on Show 1, and Best Drama Serial on Show 2, marking the first television remake to win the award. 20 programs winning at least one award (10 dramas, 10 variety/info-ed) was the largest representation for the number of winning programs in Star Awards history.

Winners and nominees
Unless otherwise stated, the winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface.

Awards eligible for voting
Online voting for the following four awards ended on 22 April at 8.30pm, while the awards ceremony was being held.

All Time Favourite Artiste
This award is a special achievement award given out to a veteran artiste(s) who have achieved a maximum of 10 popularity awards over 10 years. The award will not be presented in 2013, as there are no recipients with ten Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes award wins to allow the award to be presented that year.

Top 10 awards
The Top 10 Most Popular Male Artists and Top 10 Most Popular Female Artists was decided by a public vote. In a first in Star Awards history, the online voting was introduced and in addition to the traditional telepoll voting, both voting methods now accounted to a 50% weightage towards the overall final result. The voting line closed on 29 April at 9pm while the Show 2 was broadcast.

Presenters and performers
The following individuals presented awards or performed musical numbers.

Most nominations
Programs that received multiple nominations are listed below, by number of nominations per work:

Star Awards 2012 – Blazing The Trail
Star Awards 2012 - Blazing The Trail was a four 15-minute episode series premiered on 25 March 2012 from 10:30pm every Sundays. The series provided details of the award nominees of Star Awards 2012, leading up to the ceremony airing on 22 April.

Consecutive nominees and awardees, firsts in Top 10

 * The nominees for the "Best Current Affairs Presenter" award are the same throughout three consecutive years since 2010; while the nominees for the "Best News Presenter" award are the same from last year. Each award was received by two awardees this year.
 * Mark Lee received the Best Variety Show Host award after not winning one in 2011.
 * The public voting awards for drama categories, Most Favourite Female Character and Most Favourite Male Character, were respectively won by Rui En and Elvin Ng for the second straight year.
 * Additionally, both aforementioned artistes went on to win the Most Favourite Onscreen Couple award.
 * The latter, Ng, won his second consecutive Systema Charming Smile Award.
 * Pierre Png, Ben Yeo, Rebecca Lim and Paige Chua won the Top 10 Most Popular Artistes award for the first time, while Quan Yi Fong not being nominated for the award for the first time.
 * Cynthia Koh's second Top 10 win ended a drought of not winning a Top 10, with the last win happened in 1997.

Addition and changes of awards categories

 * This year's Star Awards reintroduced the "Best Newcomer" award, which was last presented in 2009.
 * The "Most Favourite Variety Onscreen Partner" was changed to "Most Favourite Variety Show Host", which reduced the number of nominees by half, this year.

30th drama anniversary

 * As part of the MediaCorp Channel 8's anniversary special celebrating 30 years of Chinese language drama in Singapore, past SBC/TCS/MediaCorp stars such as Chen Xiuhuan, Yang Libing, Moses Lim, Jack Neo, Jacelyn Tay, Vincent Ng, Sharon Au and Huang Biren were invited as special guests and awards presenters.

Other trivia

 * Footage of Tay Ping Hui and Bryan Wong winning the Best Actor and Favourite Host respectively were seen in a skit in Star Awards 2015 Show 1.
 * Footage of Dennis Chew winning the Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes was seen in a skit in Star Awards 2015 Show 1, except that he jumped for a total of four times in the footage instead of two.

Star Awards 2013 nominations
The first show of 2012 won both the Best Variety Research Writer and Best Variety Special on the following ceremony next year; for the latter it was Star Awards fourth win for the Best Variety Special, and the third consecutive time on doing so.