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On Oct. 3, at an investors’ conference in Texas, LIN Media CEO Vince Sadusky and CTO Brett Jenkins acknowledged that the station group might sell some of its TV spectrum in the FCC’s planned incentive auction.

It would be a way of turning Class A low-power stations and full-power duopoly stations into cash, Sadusky said. “[W]e think that there could be a value creation capability option.”

Then last week, during a quarterly earnings call, Meredith CEO Stephen Lacey was asked whether the company’s station group would hang on to all its spectrum when the auction rolls around.

Maybe not, he said. Meredith has several markets, including Atlanta, Portland, and Kansas City, with multiple stations. And while he doesn’t figure on being a “major player” in the auction, he said,  he might be a “smaller player.”

The comments mark the first times what I would call mainstream broadcasters have registered publicly their interest in participating in the auction, which the FCC hopes will reallocate up to 120 MHz of spectrum from TV to wireless broadband.

And LIN and Meredith are probably not the only ones doing some arithmetic.

Spectrum-market watchers tell me that Ion Media and Univision are also considering taking spectrum to market with far greater implications. Unlike LIN and Meredith, they are loaded with spectrum in the top 25 markets, the kind most in demand and most valuable.

For Ion and Univision, the auction must be tempting.

With 29 stations in the top 25 markets, including four duopolies and a triple play, ION covers nearly 157 million people in those markets with 6 MHz of spectrum.

Univision, with its 36 top-25 market stations, including 10 duopolies and four triple plays, reaches just under 120 million.

In the 2008 spectrum sale known as Auction 73, spectrum in the 700 MHz band in top 25 markets sold for around $4 per MHz per pop.

That would translate into Ion’s big market spectrum being worth roughly $3.8 billion and Univision’s being worth about $2.9 billion. Those are impressive numbers, and they don’t include the value of the broadcasters considerable, but somewhat less valuable spectrum holdings outside the top 25.

For Ion, the auction could be an exit plan for investors.

According to Moody’s, the EBITDA of Ion’s broadcasting business is currently about $140 million a year. At a slightly aggressive nine-times-EBITDA multiple, Ion would be valued at roughly $1.3 billion.

Let’s see, $1.3 billion (broadcasting) versus $3.8 billion (top 25 market spectrum sale). What would you do if you were an Ion investor?

After a bankruptcy, Ion is finally prospering under CEO Brandon Burgess, but its business model is limiting.

According to Moody’s reports, Ion derives about 54% of its revenue from an old-school infomercial-direct response advertising. It is transitioning to an audience-driven CPM advertising model, but it gets no retrans money and, given its reliance on off-net programming, it’s unlikely to ever be any more than a broadcast also-ran.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Still, that’s some mighty attractive spectrum.

Different story for Univision. With EBITDA of around $1 billion, it’s worth perhaps $9 billion as a broadcasting concern. That far exceeds the value of its Top 25 market spectrum ($2.9 billion).

And Univision is also on a promising growth trajectory. It has recently forced the Big Four network designation to become Big Five, thanks to winning six first-place weekly ratings over the past year in the key 18-49 demographic.

Credit the growth of the Latino population in the U.S., a trend that looks like it’s only going to continue.

Univision also keeps launching new networks, including Fusion, a partnership with Disney-ABC that premiered Monday and targets an ethnically diverse, younger demo — 16- to 30-year-olds.

The company also is reportedly is considering an initial public offering of stock.

As one analyst put it, “Univision is hitting on all cylinders.”

However, it is also highly leveraged with $9.4 billion in debt. Its investors would undoubtedly like to whittle that number down. The spectrum auction is one way of doing that.

Univision has multiple stations in 14 markets covering nearly 39 million pops. At the $4 per MHz per pop value, selling the spectrum of the extra stations could fetch about $1 billion. In one fell swoop, Univision could cut its debt more than 10%.

Selling the duopolies would have minimal impact on Univision’s business. Programming now on the stations, mostly Univision’s flanker UniMas network, could easily be moved to digital subchannels on the main stations in each market carrying Univision.

This have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to strategy is also open to Ion. But with multiple stations in only five markets, the numbers are less compelling. Those stations encompass nearly 16 million pops. Using the same math as before, the spectrum would fetch roughly $380 million.

In one shot, Ion could erase its $250 million in debt, deliver a nice little bonus to investors and top management, and plug ahead with its current business model. Not exactly a bad option.

So what are they thinking?

“That’s the $64,000 question,” says one market watcher.  “I’ve been in meetings after meetings where companies like that say they’re not interested. Maybe if they get dangled enough money they do.”

Univision declined to comment on its plans. Ion did not respond to multiple queries seeking comment.

Meanwhile, a lot of questions swirl around the spectrum auction plan itself.

The FCC intends to buy spectrum from broadcasters in a reverse auction and sell it to bandwidth hungry wireless broadband providers in what’s called a forward auction.

The broadcast auction is called a reverse auction because participants will attempt to underbid each other in an effort to sell their spectrum. The wireless broadband auction is a conventional forward auction because potential buyers will attempt to outbid each other.

The auction was originally scheduled for next year. But the rules are still being written and the smart money says that it will not take place until 2015.

It’s also hard to say whether the $4 rate will hold or go up or down, says Mark Fratrik, vice president-chief economist at BIA/Kelsey.

“The 2008 auction…provides a benchmark for possible values in the upcoming auction,” Fratrik says. “While this will be an increase in supply of spectrum, at the same time the demand for wireless spectrum has increased.”

Another big question mark is whether the FCC will offer attractive enough prices in the reverse auction to entice broadcasters like Ion and Univision to sell.

“The FCC needs to offer prices high enough to attract around 400 stations to give up their spectrum,” says Preston Padden, the former Fox and ABC executive who now represents the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, a group representing potential spectrum sellers, mostly speculators.

That 400-station critical-mass number comes from an NAB study.

There’s another option that broadcasters including Ion and Univision may be considering: Leasing spectrum instead of selling it.

With Sinclair taking the lead, some broadcasters support the idea of waiting for a new broadcast standard — ATSC 3.0 — to be implemented in the next few year. The new standard would have far more capacity than the current digital standard.

As a result, broadcaster could stick with their traditional businesses, but have ample spectrum for other uses, including leasing to wireless broadband providers.

But nobody knows if the FCC would permit leasing.

“The FCC seems hell-bent on doing this one way,” says one source with an interest in the spectrum auction. “ATSC 3.0 is a long process. One of the worst problems is the broadband people don’t want to wait, they want to go right now. The broadband lobby in Washington won’t put up with the lease model.”