MUMBAI: Sahara One‘s world television channel Firangi will be making major acquisitions at Mipcom 2007, the international audio-visual market event which kicks off today in France.

The channel is eyeing content across genres like comedy romantic comedy, drama, thriller, short series and movies.

Firangi business head Rajeev Chakrabarti says, "Firangi promises to offer its viewers the best stories. It will truly be a window to the world as we will acquire stories from all across the world."

Although a launch date has not been fixed, he says that Firangi will "definitely launch in 2007."

Being a world television channel, Firangi will need a large library of content that will be later dubbed in Hindi.

"For Firangi, we will need substantial amount of world class content. However, my focus will always be more on the quality than quantity. I will not pick up anything less than the best just to fill up the channel," says Chakrabarti.

Speaking about Mipcom he says, "We are in touch with the content providers worldwide throughout the year. Mipcom gives us an opportunity to meet all the players in the market but we pick up formats as and when we need them."

Being the first channel in this genre, how difficult it will be to gather content? "I don’t foresee any problem on that front. We will always have access to the best stories at any given point in time. The world market has become extremely competitive and the overall standard of television content has improved drastically," he says.

When asked how the international market views India today, Chakrabarti says, "India as a market can‘t be ignored by any buyer or seller in the world. We produce many more hours of high quality drama than most of the players around the world. There is a growing market of finished product around the world and a good story will always be picked up as emotions have no language. Firangi will clearly be the single largest buyer in India."