The merger and acquisition rumor mill went into overdrive this afternoon with a pair of possible group sales.

First Bloomberg reported that Apollo Global Management has hired asset manager Moelis & Co. to explore a sale of Cox Media Group. Bloomberg estimates that a sale including Cox’s television and radio stations could net $4 billion with people familiar with the matter saying there is a “preference to sell the holdings to a buyer that can take on most of the company rather than carving up the channels among a larger group of parties.” It added, “There’s no certainty the deliberations will result in a transaction.”

It has been an open secret for some time that Apollo never wanted the radio holdings when it first planned to acquire Cox’s television holdings along with its newspaper and radio stations in Dayton OH for $3.1 billion in February 2019 as well as the licenses of Northwest Television. Four months later after being unable to find a buyer for the radio division, Apollo acquired Cox’s 57 radio stations and CoxReps, Gaumt, and Cox’s Washington, D.C. news bureau operations for $500 million.

After selling its four stations in Houston to Radio One in April 2023 for $27.5 million, Cox Media Group continues to operate station clusters in Athens GA, Atlanta, Dayton, Jacksonville, Long Island, Orlando, San Antonio, Tampa, and Tulsa

Over the past week, I have also received a number of inquiries from sources questioning the validity of gossip that Alpha Media is about to be acquired. These inquiries from various unrelated segments of the business all named Connoisseur Media as the expected buyer.

The Jeffrey Warshaw led Connoisseur currently operates eleven stations in Connecticut and Long Island following last summer’s sale of its two stations in Frederick MD. The company significantly downsized in 2018 and 2019 through a number of sales and swaps as it departed markets including Allentown PA, Billings MT, Erie PA, Hartford CT, Stroudsburg PA, and Trenton NJ.

Some of our sources note that the primary investors in post-Chapter 11 bankruptcy Alpha Media have been seeking to exit their investment for quite some time. One of the sources noted that an announcement could come as soon as next week.

Warshaw led a group in April 2022 that attempted to acquire Cumulus Media for $1.2 billion that would have taken the company private for between $15 and $17 per share, but was quickly dismissed with CEO Mary Berner stating that the Cumulus Board of Directors unanimously concluded that the indication of interest significantly undervalued the company. Cumulus stock closed today at 45 cents per share.