A few days ago, FTVLive told you that the private equity firm Apollo was going to be the likely buyer of the 14 Cox stations that are currently up for sale.

But it appears that Apollo is not stopping there.

Leon Black and his Apollo Global Management are said to also be interested in a group of local television stations from Nexstar.

Apparently, these are the stations that Nexstar is interested in spinning off as part of their deal to buy Tribune.

Getting the Nexstar stations gives Apollo the scale it needs to be able to offer the Cox family an equity stake in the combined business, helping them win that auction of the Cox stations.

The plan is to house the Cox, Nexstar and Northwest assets under the same parent entity, but run the Cox stations separately, they said.

In other words, Cox sticks around as part of the new company under Apollo.

This is very good news for those currently working at a Cox station and for the industry as a whole.

While the continued consolidation is not good news, the fact that Cox stays in the game is.

When you have companies like Tegna and others that care little about doing “real journalism” having Cox still in the mix, gives some hope for the industry.

If the Apollo deals go through, the company will go from next to nothing in local TV to reaching almost 25% of the country.

How this all plays out is still uncertain, but it could be that Apollo is the next station group you want to work for.

Stay tuned…