DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Vivendi is seeking a toehold or a foothold in the United States. More on the strategy and how it's panning out from Ian Rodger, international news editor at the "Financial Times." And, Ian, you're running a story on this today. What are they up to?</s>IAN RODGER, INTL. NEWS EDITOR, "FINANCIAL TIMES": Well, Vivendi, as you may remember, is a company that sort of jettisoned its traditional water and sewage businesses in France last year when it took over Seagram, and thereby got into the media business, with Universal Studios and Universal Music being the main things. And now they want to be sort of challenging Murdoch as the biggest global media company. But the one thing they don't have is good distribution, particularly of an online kind, in the U.S. So the talk now is that they're going to do a deal in the next few days. Probably -- the candidate that everybody thinks they're going to go for is USA Networks, the cable company which they already have 43 percent of.</s>MARCHINI: Now, are they going to buy it outright, do you think?</s>RODGER: Well, this is the tricky thing. I mean, he was commenting, even this morning, on our stories saying, you know: "I don't plan any huge acquisitions. I'm into soft alliances, joint ventures, commercial agreements." Well, this wouldn't be a big deal, because he could pick up, say, 20 percent from this 20 percent that Liberty Media holds for -- it's not -- it wouldn't be a blockbuster deal. But it's hard to say what he's saying. Maybe he'll do -- have some other plan in mind.</s>MARCHINI: OK, clearly some competitive implications. Thank you, Ian Rodger of the "Financial Times."
'Financial Times': Vivendi Seeks Foothold in United States