It’s been a week since the folks at Gray Media and Scripps announced their rather benign sounding plan to swap some stations in smaller markets and so far, there has been no white smoke emerging from the FCC offices in Washington, DC. There is little belief that the Brendan Carr-chaired commission won’t approve these license transfers, but given the inscrutable nature of proceedings before the FCC these days, who knows how long it will be before these transactions are given the official stamp of approval so they can be consummated?

While that waiting game continues, the entire television industry is waiting to see if this deal will be the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” signalling if it will be open season for the deregulation that the National Association of Broadcasters has been longing for, seemingly forever. Tom Sly writing in TV NewsCheck today details the playing field pretty well in this article.

All of this anticipation has led us to spend some time conjuring up what might be the possible pairings to come in the multi-million dollar corporate version of the childhood game known as “spin the bottle.”

So, without further ado, let us give you some of our handicapping what might be the big announcements to come in the months following the FCC throwing the chains off the television industry. (Our lawyers would insist that we mention here that what follows is pure speculation, based on the reading of tea leaves and listening to various sources of gossip. No actual financial advice is being given and none of your money should be invested accordingly.)

As the late Jim Lange used to say when the three bachelors were introduced in the old television game show “The Dating Game,” Here they are! (Cue the Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass music!)

COUPLE NUMBER ONE: Cox Media and…everybody?

The waiting game on the announcement that Apollo Global Management, the investment company that manages over $750 Billion of various assets, is selling its stake in the television stations of Cox Media that it acquired at the end of 2019, has gone on for quite some time. The list of would-be buyers has seemingly included every major group name and then a few new names that don’t currently own any media properties. Check all the names in that TV NewsCheck article linked earlier.

But the main focus of speculation always comes back to two of the largest group owners, Nexstar and Sinclair.

The Cox portfolio of some 12 full-power television stations in 9 markets is an attractive prize for either company, though not without some issues to overcome in either case. The Cox group represents a major footprint in the Southeastern portion of the country, still one of the fastest growing areas. The speculation is that flagship WSB-TV in Atlanta could be worth a billion dollars on its own. Add in Orlando and Jacksonville in Florida, along with Charlotte, North Carolina and you have a seven-station nucleus of strong stations that would be very attractive to either Perry Sook or David Smith, who are buyers with access to the financial capital needed to cover the big check for the Cox group. For both companies, there would be some challenges to swallowing the entire portfolio that Apollo wants to unload. For Nexstar, those challenges would be their current ownership or management of stations in Charlotte (Fox affiliate WJZY and My Network affiliate WMYT) and in Dayton, Ohio (NBC affiliate WDTN and CW affiliate WBDT.)

It stands to be seen whether an FCC embracing deregulation more than a couple making out in a daytime soap opera would go so far as to allow one owner to have four over-the-air signals in one market. That would be the case in Charlotte, where Cox owns ABC affiliate WSOC-TV and independent WAXN. In Dayton, Cox has WHIO-TV, which is so dominant in that market, it probably could count as two or even three stations on its own, at least based on its annual billing.

Sinclair would face similar concerns in Dayton, where it owns the ABC affiliate, WKEF and the Fox affiliate WRGT. Other markets with potentially too many stations to keep would be Seattle, where Sinclair owns KOMO-TV, the ABC affiliate and KUNS, the Univision outlet there, and Cox has KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate. Pittsburgh is on that list as well, because while Cox has NBC affiliate WPXI-TV, Sinclair already has WPGH (Fox) and WPNT (My Network.)

The other big question on the sale of the Cox television stations is whether they will all go in one neat package, or will they be sold in a different configuration, across multiple buyers. While we’d bet that Apollo would want a single transaction to keep it simple, the lure of a higher total sales price could lead to multiple transactions with different buyers. However, minor speed bumps like having too many stations in a market aren’t really concerning. Multiple buyers appear to be standing in the wings for any potential spin-offs that might need to happen quickly. The wait continues for the reality that the once-storied Cox television group is going to be “under new management,” any day now.

But we’ve been hearing this for weeks now, so your guess is as good as anyone’s on when somebody is getting the ring.

Wondering what to do if you might happen to be working in one of the stations that might be acquired or spun off to another company? Industry veteran Hank Price offered some advice on that very topic last week . Definitely worth your time to read, if you haven’t already.

Tomorrow, we’ll reveal our second couple that could be headed down the aisle to the merger altar. Not to be too big of a tease here, we can tell you that we were shocked to even consider that these two group owners might get together. But after all, it is only a quick Acela ride between their corporate headquarters.

So as Jim Lange said as each episode of “The Dating Game” ended: “We’ll be back with more girls, more guys, more fun and more games. Until then, remember Dating can be lots of fun!”

A quick epilogue: The name of the theme song from Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass that played in each episode of “The Dating Game”? That would be “Spanish Flea.” Go play that title on your Spotify or Apple Music account to be taken back to 1965. It was a simpler time, some sixty years ago, when a group owner could have a whopping total of seven television stations!