Watchdog

As the NBA demonstrated last season, playing a lockout-truncated schedule is a good way to boost ratings, since each game takes on added importance.

So it has been in the NHL this year, with many teams posting big increases. But even taking that into consideration, the three teams in the New York area have been particularly impressive.

The last time Sports Business Journal studied all...

MSG is premiering a series Monday called “The Lineup: Best Sports Movies,’’ taking it one sport at a time in eight nights, thus highlighting an age-old verity: There are baseball and boxing movies, and there is everything else.

For example, Monday’s five baseball finalists, all from the fertile period 1984-92, include “Field of Dreams,’’ “The Natural,’’ “Bull Durham,’’ “Major League’’ and...

Assuming the Knicks resist the temptation to suit him up, Patrick Ewing is set to join MSG’s postgame coverage of Wednesday’s game against the Magic and again March 31 against the Celtics.

Ewing, 50, has been an assistant coach with the Wizards, Rockets and Magic and has said he someday would like a shot with the Knicks. For now, though, dabbling in media work must suffice.

“The Garden...

Before this season, Alan Hahn and Wally Szczerbiak knew each other primarily as sportswriter and subject. But the MSG studio analysts have become fast friends – helped by a regular carpool to the Garden for most Knicks games.

Hahn, who lives in Holbrook, and Szczerbiak, who lives in Cold Spring Harbor, meet at a mutually convenient park and ride and alternate driving in from there, taking...

Hockey players are generally a tough group of people. But they've got nothing on hockey reporters, specifically MSG Network rinkside reporter John Giannone.

Towards the end of the second period in Thursday's Rangers-Islanders game, Rangers defenseman Marc Staal tried to clear the puck out of the Rangers' zone, but it sailed over the boards towards the Rangers bench. Giannone was the unfortunate...

MSG is back with a second season of “The Garden Transformed’’ all this coming week, but the show hockey fans – remember hockey? – might find most interesting is Episode 2 Tuesday.

That night Denis Potvin will recall his 1979 hit on Ulf Nilsson that led to an enduring chant involving his name that I’m assuming I am not permitted to quote here.

“This was not funny at the time,’’ Potvin...

Historic week at the Garden! But no, it is not because of Wednesday’s benefit mega-concert or Thursday’s Lakers-Knicks showdown. That sort of stuff is old hat at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

Now for something completely different: On Sunday, MSG for the first time in its 133-year history will host . . . college wrestling?

“We are always looking to do the biggest and best in sports...

With hockey on hiatus, the Knicks have picked up the winter sports slack, parlaying their fast start into large TV audiences.

Through their first 13 Nielsen-rated games on MSG, they averaged 3.22 percent of New York-area homes, up 68 percent from last season. (Three games could not be measured in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.)

That does not include Thursday night's TNT tilt against...

When a knee injury put an end to Wally Szczerbiak’s 10-year NBA career in 2009, he was content to work a limited schedule talking college basketball for CBS’s cable sports outlet.

At the time his three children were under 8 years old, so there was plenty to keep him and his wife, Shannon, busy at home in Cold Spring Harbor, near where he starred in high school.

Starting this week, though,...

Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning are the most accomplished coach/player duo in 21st century New York sports, but that hasn’t been enough to have their remarks carried in full on the postgame show the Giants themselves produce.

Why would the team choose to cut off the news conferences of Coughlin and Manning, often to get back to a panel of analysts?

Don Sperling, VP and executive producer...