Star Awards 2013 (Chinese: 红æÂÂ大奠2013) 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 2013 was broadcast live on Channel 8, on 21 April 2013 and 28 April 2013. The first ceremony was held at the Mediacorp TV Theatre while the second ceremony was held at the Marina Bay Sands. The ceremonies were also broadcast on 8 International and the second ceremony on Astro AEC & Astro Quan Jia HD for the first time in HD.
20 programs (eight dramas, nine variety/info-ed, and three current affair programs) won at least one award, the largest representation of programs with one awards tying the last year's ceremony's count. Best Drama Serial Pillow Talk won only one award, its lowest count of awards for a winning Drama Serial, while Unriddle 2 won the most awards for the ceremony with five (two were from the big four major acting categories, and three from Show 1). Joys of Life won three awards out of the largest count of nominations for the ceremony (13), all awarded from Show 1. Only two variety/info-ed programs won multiple awards, which were the third season's Find Me A Singaporean and the last year's Star Awards ceremony, the latter retaining the three-year winning streak for Best Variety Special.
This was the second ceremony since 2007 to not present the All-Time Favourite Artiste, in its place was the newly introduced Honorary TV Award. This is currently the last ceremony to date where awards for "Best News Presenter" and "Best Current Affairs Presenter" were presented, ending a tradition that began in 2000.
The first show, titled "亮éª堫æ¹" (Shining Light) was broadcast on 21 April 2013 at the Mediacorp Studios at Caldecott Hill.
In place of the usual opener, artistes and nominated backstage personnel were directly ushered to their seats on Show 1, in view of a special tribute for late television icon Huang Wenyong, who died the previous day. A five-minute segment begins with host Lee Teng delivering his eulogy, then 30 seconds of silence was observed, and a video of his contributions was played. The show later opened after a commercial break at 7.08 pm.
The second show was broadcast on 28 April 2013 at the Marina Bay Sands Grand Theatre.
The Honorary TV award is introduced as a special achievement award given out posthumously to past artiste(s) to honour contributions made to the local TV industry. The wife and daughter of Huang Wenyong represented the late television icon to receive the Honorary TV Award in recognition of his contributions to Singapore's television industry.
Similar to previous ceremonies, The Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes and Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes will be decided by telepoll and online voting; each carrying a 50% weightage towards the final result. The telepoll lines was announced and opened on 15 March 2013, and would run until 28 April at 8.30 pm. The temporary results (Top n) are not publicized on TV but through the Toggle Now app, which users can download from the App Store or Google Play.
The nominees are listed in telepoll line order. The results of the Top 10 awards are not in rank order.
<sup>2</sup> Proceeds from the "Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes" calls for Huang Wenyong will be donated to HCA Hospice.
<sup>3</sup> Xiang Yun represented Huang to collect the award.
Programs that received multiple nominations are listed below, by number of nominations per work:
The following individuals presented awards or performed musical numbers.
The day before the first show, Huang Wenyong died of lymphoma, and a eulogy was presented before the show 1 began. The following ceremony a week after, after Huang was posthumously awarded the Honorary TV Award by acting cabinet minister Lawrence Wong, given as representation to his wife and daughter Wenwen, the show announced that any votes cast for Huang from the "Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes" calls will proceed donations to HCA Hospice. Prior to the announcement that Huang would win its second and the other Top 10 since 2011, several shouts of Huang could be heard as only one award was left to be given out. Representative Xiang Yun praised the viewers live and thanked them for voting, and mentioned that nominations for the Top 10 are not easy and are fiercely fought throughout each year; Xiang told that it was Huang's final award, and encouraged the viewers on appreciation to a certain character through love and esteem, which received a standing ovation. This was the only time where the award was presented to date; the award did not return in 2019, although there was a tribute to one artiste, Aloysius Pang, who died earlier on 23 January that year.
The opening monologue by Young Artiste recipient Tan Jun Sheng and Jia Jia was also well praised by media, which brought several references in the current trends of 2013, including a cold open of Tan parodying Yam Ah Mee, then-returning officer at the time, and several celebrity gossips, including John Quek's announcer role. After Guo Liang and Quan Yifeng were introduced on stage, the hosts praised the artistes on their potential before the children return backstage; Guo even lampshade the awards being a "junior spin-off" and starting an official "adult version".
The 2013 ceremony won all three nominations, which were Best Set Design, Best Variety Research Writer and Best Variety Special, on the following ceremony next year; for the latter it was Star Awards fifth win for the Best Variety Special, and the fourth consecutive time on doing so.