MUMBAI: English GEC Star World is airing a new film review show, ?The Front Row with Anupama Chopra?, every Friday from 27 April at 8:30 pm.

The show is a film lovers? weekly cheat sheet into the world of entertainment with fun, film reviews, sneak-peeks and interaction and interviews with the biggest stars from Bollywood and Hollywood.

?The Front Row? will introduce a format that will not only bring forth the critic?s view but also establish the viewers? opinion about a film.

Star India GM, senior VP, English Channels Saurabh Yagnik said, ?With ?The Front Row?, we are providing an interactive platform that will give our viewers a chance to meet with movie makers, analyse their films and make an informed decision about the film. Anupama Chopra is one of India?s most admired film critics. She is not only extremely well networked in Bollywood but has her reach extending to the biggest stars of Hollywood as well. ?

The opening episode features an in-depth discussion on Superhero films wherein Anupama Chopra reviews the much awaited movie ?The Avengers? and interview the lead star cast- Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston.?

Chopra added, ?The Front Row celebrates cinema - Bollywood, Hollywood and everything in between. The show has an exciting format and aims to capture all that is new and buzzing in the movies each week. We will present reviews, exclusive interviews, panel discussions and trivia. We want to bridge the gap between the exhilarating world of films and the expectations of viewers.? The show aims to fuse the audience?s bold opinions and Anupama?s analytical views about a film.

The first segment of the show gives a roundup of the latest Hollywood and Bollywood news, along with Anupama?s filtered views on the latest film releases. The second segment is either a discussion forum, moderated by Chopra encouraging constructive interactions between the audience and the members of the film fraternity or a Roundtable discussion with directors, actors and roducers to talk about industry trends and their own experiences and craft or interviews with the Hollywood and Bollywood stars.

The third and the last segment is more like a gossip shot for the audience called the ?Sneak Peak?. In this segment, hidden video clippings from Bollywood would be unveiled and shown to the viewers.

CANNES: Indian content - apart from Bollywood movies ? has not really travelled much overseas with total sales of TV shows globally not even crossing $20 million annually. The reason: broadcasters who own the content are loathe to sell it aggressively internationally, and prefer sitting on their hundreds of thousands of hours of TV shows.

But wait, here?s a player who‘s willing to challenge and change the status quo. Zee TV which has been quite aggressive in building its presence at TV content markets such as MipTV and Mipcom is about to take a major step by branding its syndicated content division as Zee Bollyworld. The company is making a soft launch of this intiaitive at MipTV in Cannes.

Says international business head Bharat Kumar Ranga: "No longer are we going to be in the commodity selling business, wherein we (Zee and other broadcasters which are selling content) cut each other‘s prices just to strike a deal with a potential buyer for our TV shows. Say we are quoting $200 an episode, another Indian broadcaster is more than open to discounting that price, and a third broadcaster is quite ok with dropping it even further."

Ranga says that Zee TV is quite kicked up about branding Indian TV content and building up the genre. "We chose the name Zee Bollyworld. We will be selling TV shows and movies as we wanted to own the Indian content message globally. Apart from selling our content in 18-19 languages, we will be aggregating it under the Zee Bollyworld from other sources too and syndicating it internationally," he says.

Ranga points out that the Zee group has a huge amount of business intelligence from 45 markets around the world, thanks to the number of years that it has been distributing its channels internationally and also attending international syndication markets like MipCom and MipTV. "Our syndication sales people are being re-nominclatured as syndication advisers ? they will no longer sell programming, they will advise buyers. We are looking at building strong relationships with our clients," he reveals.