Tinseltown TV

When Sheeraz Hasan arrived in Los Angeles in 2002, Hollywood and Bollywood were two enormous entertainment industries moving on parallel tracks.

South Asian television carried Bollywood. American television carried Hollywood. The global audience could see both worlds, but nobody had built a weekly programme that connected them.

Sheeraz saw the absence as a market. The same instinct that had filled his London cafe now pointed him toward a much larger audience.

He named the programme Tinseltown TV and took the idea to B4U, one of the largest South Asian television networks. There was no pilot and no established production company behind him.

He sold the programme in the room. The agreement gave him a weekly vehicle for Hollywood interviews, delivered in English to South Asian audiences around the world.

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The first order was for fifty-two episodes. Sheeraz left the meeting with a television contract and still needed a camera, a crew and access to the stars.

The access arrived through Rowland Perkins, a co-founder of Creative Artists Agency. Sheeraz asked for help, Perkins understood the proposition and helped package the programme for Hollywood.

Within weeks, Tinseltown was credentialed on the premiere circuit. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, John Travolta, Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent stopped for its microphone.

Tinseltown TV archive

Each interview began in Hollywood and ended inside a programme made for viewers the existing entertainment press rarely addressed directly.

Tinseltown ran lean: a small team, digital equipment and a format that could move quickly from a premiere in Los Angeles to a television schedule serving several continents.

The programme aired through B4U and Eros, then expanded across satellite platforms in the Middle East and the South Asian diaspora. Sheeraz produced and hosted more than two hundred episodes.

At its reported peak, Tinseltown reached five hundred million viewers across more than one hundred and thirty countries and became B4U's most-watched programme.

Variety covered the programme twice. Fortune followed Sheeraz for a week and profiled the business under the headline Bollywood's Newest Star.

By then, Hollywood publicists knew the programme, South Asian viewers expected its interviews and broadcasters had a reliable route between the two markets.

Years later, the same structure appeared in Sheeraz's work with Priyanka Chopra: Hollywood-side access, an audience with deep recognition in India and a public moment designed to travel in both directions.

Her Los Angeles activation came years after Tinseltown. It showed that a crossover could be built once the access and distribution were connected.

FAME archive

Sheeraz reused the Tinseltown method throughout his later work: find the audience others overlook, earn access on both sides and give the story somewhere to travel.

Hollywood.TV used it for celebrity footage. His Dubai work brought it into the Gulf. FAME now uses it when a public figure, founder or brand has to enter a new market.