Star Awards

The Star Awards (Chinese: 红星大奖) is an annual ceremony where the media organisation, MediaCorp, recognises entertainers in their employ for their outstanding performances. Unlike similar entertainment ceremonies, the ceremony also celebrates how popular individual entertainers are based on how much fans were collectively willingly to spend through a voting system that elevate the popularity status of individual entertainers.

History
The first ever annual Star Awards event was held in 1994. In the first three years of the Awards, MediaCorp handed out just 10 Most Popular Artistes awards (five for each gender) instead of the current 20 (10 for each gender).

The Best Actor and Best Actress awards were only introduced in 1995. Prior to that, it was more of a popularity contest, with Li Nanxing, Chew Chor Meng and Zoe Tay winning the Most Popular Actor and Actress award.

In 1995, a top gun of Hong Kong's TVB was one of the guests at the Star Awards. When giving out the award, he commented on the significance of the awards in recognizing television talents. He wished that Hong Kong will have similar television award ceremony in future. In less than 2 years after his return to Hong Kong, the TVB Anniversary Awards was born.

The Star Awards has traditionally been held at the TV Theatre on Caldecott Hill. Though there were some exceptions, the first being in 1996 where this annual event was being held at Harbour Pavilion, and 2006, when it was held at St James Power Station.

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 due to time constraints and results and clips from the event would be shown at the ceremony. From 2010 onwards, all awards would be presented at the ceremony proper and the awards ceremony has been split into two shows. From 2010 to present, the 1st ceremony was held at the TV Theatre. In 2010 and 2011, the 2nd ceremony was held at Resorts World Sentosa. While in 2012 and 2013, the 2nd ceremony was held at Marina Bay Sands.

The award ceremonies were held in December each year from 1994 to 2007. From 2009 onwards, the Star Awards would be held annually in April to honour television talents from works from the previous year. Hence, there was no ceremony in the year 2008.

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. The ceremony was broadcast on Channel U in 2005 for the time.

Trophy
The Star Awards trophy has seen three different designs, since its inception in 1994.
 * 1994 - 1997: The trophy was a straight column topped with a gold star.
 * 1998 - 1999: The trophy was changed to a cone-like shape with a bigger star.
 * 2000–present: A new trophy made in Shanghai was designed, weighing 4 kg and cost S$1,000 each. It is designed with a crystal body shaped in the letter "S", and from another angle, shaped in the letter "A", forming the initials of the "Star Awards". The trophy comes in different colours every year (Green, Purple, Golden-brown, Blue etc.).

List of ceremonies
Colour key
 * Recipient of Special Achievement Award
 * Recipient of All-Time Favourite Artiste Award
 * Recipient of Rocket Award
 * Recipient of Honorary TV Award

Current categories
• 2

Suspended categories
• 2

Retired categories
• 2