Question du jour: Will Fox 25 become a player in the high-stakes showdown between NBC and Channel 7?owner Ed Ansin over the future of Boston television?

We ask because the big buzz at all the local stations is that Channel 25 could be sold or traded to either Ansin or NBC, a move that would solve a lot of problems for all three stations.

Here’s how: The Cox ?Media Group acquired Fox 25 just about a year ago in a trade with the Fox network, giving up two stations in the San Francisco area and getting the Boston station and one in Memphis in ?return. But it hasn’t turned out to be a great deal for Cox.

Fox 25 lost its marquee anchorgal, Maria Stephanos, to WCVB and ratings and revenues have been on the decline ever since.

“Their ratings are about half of what they were a year and a half ago,” said one industry observer. “Some of that is just attrition in the industry, but a lot isn’t. Remember, they got the station a year after the Red Sox won the World Series. (Which scored big ratings for the Fox affiliate.) They put a lot of money into the station and invested heavily in new people. But their ratings have gone down and their revenue is way down.”

Could Cox want out of Boston? Fox 25 VP and General Manager Tom Raponi says no.

“Cox Media Group is proud to be the Fox affiliate in Boston and although we have only been here 18 months we continue to make investments in our news product in order to serve the Boston community with complete New England news coverage,” he said in an email. “We enjoy competing in the Boston market as a Fox affiliate with a long-term affiliation agreement.”

But what if, for example, NBC or even Ansin offered to buy the station — or perhaps trade their stations in Miami for Fox 25? That would seem to be a win-win-win for all three parties.

Ansin has been told by NBC that they are not renewing their affiliate agreement with Channel 7 come January. That leaves Ansin’s WHDH without any network programming. Goodbye “Sunday Night Football,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and every other NBC show. They will move to the new NBC-owned station called NBC Boston.

NBC’s problem is that they need a facility to ?house all of their Boston properties. NECN is too small to ?fit the new station, plus Comcast SportsNet and the Telemundo station the network owns here.

What if NBC buys Channel 25 — or trades Cox the NBC station in Miami for it. NBC gets the station’s facility and equipment in Dedham and can hand-pick the Fox 25 talent it wants to keep for its local news. The network can then spin the Fox affiliation to Ansin, get him off their backs, and give Channel 7 some network programming.

Or perhaps Ansin buys 25 — he would have to get rid of Channel 56, which he also owns in order to do it, but that may not be an insurmountable problem with the FCC spectrum auction in the offing. Or he could trade his Miami station to Cox for it. He then moves the Fox programming to Channel 7 and can do whatever he wants with the Dedham building. It is worth some dough, and he could even take sweet revenge on NBC by not selling it to them and instead converting it to offices or condos.

A spokesman for Ansin denied that there’s anything like this in the works.

“I talked to Ed Ansin and that simply is not the case,” said WHDH GM Paul Magnes.

And an NBC spokeswoman also said she hadn’t heard anything about those scenarios.

But the scuttlebutt has been making the rounds at the local TV stations for weeks.

“Any one of these deals makes sense as a possibility and they are all plausible,” said our insider. “It provides a rather elegant solution for all of them: Cox gets out of the market and maybe gets a station in the Southeast, where they are headquartered and have most of their markets, Fox ends up on Channel 7 (Ansin has been in business with Fox for years in Miami) and NBC has a place to house all their employees.”

As always, do stay tuned …