''Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena'' was an American sports program originally

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

from

1946 Events January * January 6 - The 1946 North Vietnamese parliamentary election, first general election ever in Vietnam is held. * January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into f ...

1948 Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

, and later on the now-defunct

DuMont Television Network The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...

from

1954 Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim ...

Broadcast history

Before having their own program, boxing matches from St. Nicholas Arena were broadcast as part of the ''

Gillette Cavalcade of Sports The ''Gillette Cavalcade of Sports'' is an American radio-turned-television program by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) that ran from 1942 to 1960. The program included broadcasts of a variety of sports, although it is primarily remembered ...

''.

NBC

NBC broadcast ''Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena'' twice a week—at 9:30 p.m. on Mondays and at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays. The series ended on May 9, 1949, as a result of budgetary problems at the sponsoring

Gillette Company Gillette is an American brand of safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by the multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G). Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was owned by The Gill ...

DuMont

The DuMont version was hosted by

Chris Schenkel Christopher Eugene Schenkel (August 21, 1923 – September 11, 2005) was an American sportscaster. Over the course of five decades he called play-by-play for numerous sports on television and radio, becoming known for his smooth delivery and bar ...

; Schenkel took over for

Dennis James Dennis James (born Demie James Sposa, August 24, 1917 – June 3, 1997) was an American television personality, philanthropist, and commercial spokesman. Until 1976, he had appeared on TV more times and for a longer period than any other televi ...

, who had hosted most of DuMont's boxing telecasts prior to 1954. This regularly scheduled program, which aired boxing matches from St. Nicholas Arena in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

on Monday nights, is notable for being the final program to air on DuMont. The last network-aired program was broadcast on August 6, 1956, though a few remaining programs were seen locally on New York's

WABD WABD (97.5 FM) is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Mobile, Alabama. The station, established in 1973 as WABB-FM, is owned and operated by Cumulus Media. Its studios are on Dauphin Street in Midtown Mobile, and its ...

afterward. With limited finances, DuMont aired many sports programs throughout its history. Boxing,

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

, and

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

were always network mainstays, even during

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

, as they were cheaper than most scripted programs (this in an era before sports rights fees accelerated to their modern levels) and filled large programming blocks that would otherwise have gone unfilled.The DuMont Television Network Historical Web Site
Most of DuMont's regular series were cancelled on April 1, 1955, and the last non-sports program, the panel show ''

What's the Story ''What's the Story'' is an American television panel show broadcast on the DuMont Television Network from July 25, 1951, to September 23, 1955, and aired in eleven different timeslots.Brooks, Tim & Marsh, Earle (1964). ''The Complete Directory to ...

'', left the airwaves on September 23, 1955, leaving only a few cheaply produced sports programs on the schedule. However, by August 1956, even DuMont's sports programs, including ''Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena'', were axed.

Episode status

About 60 episodes of the DuMont version, including the final program on August 6, 1956, survive at the

UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the archiv ...

. However, some of these episodes are from the non-network version which continued to run on

after the network closed (these are also notable due to the rarity of

kinescopes Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s ...

of local programming aired on United States television stations during the 1950s).

References

Bibliography

*David Weinstein, ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'' (Philadelphia:

Temple University Press Temple University Press is a university press founded in 1969 that is part of Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). It is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach t ...

, 2004) *Alex McNeil, ''Total Television'', Fourth edition (New York:

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Ballantine Books Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains ...

, 1964)

External links

*
DuMont historical website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena 1946 American television series debuts 1956 American television series endings American sports television series Black-and-white American television shows St. Nicholas Arena DuMont Television Network original programming English-language television shows NBC Sports DuMont sports programming