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.
Read more about this topic: MSG Network
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)