David Lieberman

Fox Television Stations will become a power in the San Francisco Bay area as a result of the television station swap with Cox in Memphis, Boston, and San Francisco.

Fox will pick up San Francisco area affiliate KTVU and independent KICU and give Cox Media Group WHBQ in Memphis and WFXT in Boston -- which will remain Fox affiliates -- the companies say.

Regulators will have to approve the deal. But assuming they do, then Fox “will benefit from both the strong demographics of the Bay area market as well as the alignment with our package of sports rights,” FTS chief Jack Abernethy says. KTVU carries Fox’ broadcasts of NFL games and shares a studio with KICU.

SF is the largest market where Fox didn’t own a station. Cox’s Bill Hoffman says that the Memphis and Boston stations “fit nicely into CMG’s broadcast portfolio” and offer an opportunity to have “a great news presence in these two markets.”

[Commentary] This is the time of year when deal speculation usually percolates: Moguls always have mergers on their minds as they prepare to huddle in early July at Allen & Co’s Sun Valley gathering for the media elite.

And content companies have to be thinking more seriously than usual about their options. Their bargaining power could soon diminish if Washington regulators allow Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, AT&T buy DirecTV, and -- perhaps -- Sprint buy T-Mobile. What deals make sense?

Janney Capital Markets’ Tony Wible tiptoed out on a limb today by making a serious attempt to answer the question -- with some potentially surprising conclusions. Here are the ones that seem to offer the greatest strategic and financial benefits: CBS and Viacom; Discovery and Scripps Networks; Disney and Discovery; and, Fox and Time Warner.

The government may have to insist on conditions before approving deals such as Comcast’s planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable and AT&T’s with DirecTV the Time Warner CEO told investors.

He’s not concerned about the next few years. “In some ways it could help because they’ll be more effective distributors.”

But Jeff Bewkes wants assurance that the mergers won’t close doors for consumers who want his company’s content. ”It’s a question of what happens to innovation and technical advances,” he says. “Is it used to stifle competing products” such as set top boxes or user interfaces? It’s important that electronic distributors “offer a robust market that is not cut off to multiple sources for consumers to get at the programming.”

NBC is “firing on all cylinders” as it ends the season No. 1 in its 18-to-49 target audience, NBCUniversal Advertising Sales President Linda Yaccarino says.

But the network’s main business pitch at its upfront presentation was familiar to anyone who showed up in 2013: As part of Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, NBC offers far more corporate synergies than its broadcast peers, presenting buyers with opportunities to make a “portfolio wide investment” from one sales team in “the most amazing collection of brands ever assembled,” she says. ”We proved it. It works. It works by a mile.”

Yaccarino pointed to Comcast’s Project Symphony broadcast-cable-digital-movie-theme park-cable system promotions for Universal’s Despicable Me, the Olympics, and NBC’s The Blacklist. (Telemundo and NBC’s cable channels are scheduled to make separate presentations to ad buyers.)