Filmfare

Filmfare is an English-language, tabloid-sized magazine about Hindi-language cinema, popularly known as Bollywood. Established in 1952, the magazine is published by Worldwide Media, a subsidiary of The Times Group, India's largest media services conglomerate. Filmfare is one of the most popular entertainment magazine in India. Since 1954, it gives popular film awards the annual Filmfare Awards, Filmfare Awards South and Filmfare Awards East.

History
Launched in 1952 by The Times Group that published the newspaper The Times of India, Filmfare came only a year after Screen was launched by The Indian Express. Taking off from the image of The Times of India, Filmfare combined serious film journalism with glamour. It featured exposés of exploitation of junior artists, articles various aspects of filmmaking, and notable cinemas of the world, like Italian, Japanese and the German cinema. It also benefitted hugely from the extensive distribution network of the newspaper, and quickly gained popularity nationwide as an upmarket households.

In 1953, it further emboldened its place in the Indian film industry, when it established two motion picture awards. First the Filmfare Awards for movies in Hindi, and the Filmfare Awards South for movies in the Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu languages both started in the same year. The awards were based on Academy Awards, with a difference that the winners were decided by readers votes, thus known as "popular awards". The annual Filmfare Awards ceremony, held in Mumbai, is one of the oldest and most prominent film events in India.

Circulation dropped in the early 1990s, prompting the publishers to attach free consumer products (like soaps or shampoo sachets) to the magazine. Additionally, special monthly editions with a few pages dedicated to Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu cinema were begun.

Filmfare Awards East for films from West Bengal, Odisha and Assam was started in 2014.

In 2005 Filmfare and some other publications, most notably Femina, and Indian editions of Hello, Good Food, Top Gear, and Good Homes were split off into a subsidiary. The new ownership, Worldwide Media, is a 50:50 joint venture between The Times Group and BBC Magazines, the publishing division of BBC Worldwide. Thereafter in October 2011 Worldwide Media became a wholly owned subsidiary of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), the parent company of the Times Group. The Hindi language edition of Filmfare was launched in 2011.

Regular segments

 * Masala Fix
 * Hindi film industry news; reports about the latest quarrels between actors; celebrity gossip and rumours.


 * Preview
 * Previews of upcoming films, and new actors to watch out for.


 * Fashion and Beauty
 * Stars are prominently branded "hot" or "not" depending on their fashion quota.


 * The Good Life
 * Lifestyles of the actors, their fitness routines.


 * Exclusives
 * Cover stories, short prose with an array of photos and interviews.


 * Your Say
 * Reader's reviews and mails. Box-Office collections.


 * Rapid Fire
 * Shatrughan Sinha answers questions asked by readers.