HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

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What: TV Guide cover

Where: At newsstands, beginning Monday

Guess who’s coming to town as Santa Claus? None other than Shaquille O’Neal. He’s not only coming to town, he’s going national. O’Neal, dressed in a specially made Santa suit, is on the cover of all editions of next week’s TV Guide.

The magazine’s editors chose O’Neal to be featured in their special “Best of the Year” edition, and once O’Neal agreed, there was a 24-hour window to get it done. The seamstress who produced the Santa suit for the 7-foot-1 Laker center did it in a rush job.

But O’Neal liked the suit so much he asked to keep it. So if you see him in a Santa suit, you know where he got it.

O’Neal did the photo shoot on Nov. 23, the night after he came off the injured list to play against the Chicago Bulls. At the shoot, Rick Fox jumped up in Santa’s lap. There are photos of that, but not in the magazine.

“We’re saving those for blackmail purposes,” quipped a TV Guide spokesman.

In the magazine is a story titled “The Real O’Neal,” by David Hochman. In the lead, O’Neal explains he does all his Christmas shopping in one night at an FAO Schwartz: “They let me come in after midnight and basically buy out the store.”

-- Larry Stewart