Sahara One’s new TV channel, FIRANGI due to be launched Febraury 25 is already creating waves about its content and USP. To put in short, the channel will be first of its kind in India as it would bring programmes from different regions of the world, which would be dubbed in Hindi.
Firangi would be an addition to the ever growing genre of General Entertainment Channels flooding the India television space. To carve a niche of itself in the competitve space, would be a tough job for the channel, especially when Indian family audiences won’t be able to identify themselves with foreign characters.
The target audience for channel is aimed at 20-40 year olds residing in northern and western India. It would be a departure from the commonly shown soap operas with similar story lines but would instead show sitcoms (situational comedies), short stories, adventure series and even movies. Most of the serials would be of one hour duration unlike Indian serials which are normally of 22 minutes playing time.
But the key to success of Firangi shall be the quality of dubbing. As has been seen in many English movies being released in India, poor dubbing often mars its commercial prospects. The viewers can only associate themselves if they get dialogues at their reception pace.
The shows that will be aired would last for maximum 6-8 months and would not be more than 2 years old, even some of them would be running currently in their respective countries.
For the channel to become commercially viable, it would be important to first get the concept adapt to Indian viewers and rope in advertisers, which would be only possible if shows have proper content with proper dubbing.