MSG Network - History

History

What would become MSG debuted on October 15, 1969 with a game between the Rangers and the Minnesota North Stars. MSG Network, thus, became the first regional sports network in North America, and one of the first of its kind in the world.

The channel, which at the time was not even named, was carried by Manhattan Cable Television under a one-year, 125-event deal that was signed in May 1969. At the time, the cable company, which had televised Knickerbocker and Ranger post-season games the previous spring for a $25,000 rights fee, had only 13,000 subscribers.

The Garden renewed the deal with the cable company, then called Sterling Manhattan Cable Television, in the fall of 1970 for five years at an estimated rights fee of $1m to $1.5m. Charles Dolan, who later headed MSG and Cablevision, was the president of the cable company at the time.

In 1977, the channel was sold to Gulf+Western along with its namesake sports arena; the company would rename itself to Paramount Communications (after sister companies Paramount Pictures and Paramount Television) in 1989.

Games from the Garden later appeared throughout the early days of Home Box Office. By 1978, the first mentions of the "temporarily named" Madison Square Garden Network appeared in print.

By the mid-1980s, MSG was using both the full name "Madison Square Garden Network" and its new abbreviated form. By the early 1990s, the channel's name became MSG. In the mid-1990s, MSG used the slogan "The Best in the Game". In 1994, Paramount Communications was acquired by Viacom (itself a cable giant, having once owned various cable systems in the US and also owns MTV Networks), who in turn sold the MSG properties to Cablevision and ITT Corporation, which had 50% ownership each. ITT would sell its share to Cablevision three years later.