Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena

Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena was an American sports program originally broadcast on NBC from 1946 to 1948, and later on the DuMont Television Network from 1954 to the network's closure in 1955, and was their final regularly-scheduled program. It was later a syndicated program based at WABD television in New York City (the former flagship of DuMont) from 1955 until 1958, mostly under the "DuMont" banner.

Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena
Genre	Sports
Presented by	Chris Schenkel
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
Production
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	60–90 mins.
Original release
Network	NBC (1946–1948) DuMont (1954–1955) Syndicated, through WABD (1955–1958)
Release	1946 (1946) – August 4, 1958 (1958-08-04)

Broadcast history

Before having their own program, boxing matches from St. Nicholas Arena were broadcast as part of the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.^[1]

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.^[2] The series ended on May 9, 1949, as a result of budgetary problems at the sponsoring Gillette Company.^[3]

DuMont

The DuMont version was hosted by Chris Schenkel; Schenkel took over for Dennis James, who had hosted most of DuMont's boxing telecasts prior to 1954.^[4]

This program, which aired boxing matches from St. Nicholas Arena in New York City on Monday nights, is notable for being the final program to air on DuMont.^[5] After a short period of significant decline, DuMont announced in April 1955 that all remaining scripted programming would end on a per-program basis, a process that wrapped up by September and effectively ended regular operations.^[6][7] Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena was the only regularly-scheduled show to remain on the lineup, as it was a co-op production and not sponsored.^[8][9]

Boxing transitioned into being a show syndicated from WABD, the former DuMont flagship, to a network of 37 stations under the "DuMont" banner.^[10] Most of these stations were affiliates of ABC and aired it on Monday nights, a night ABC did not fully program into. When The Lawrence Welk Show moved to a later start time on ABC, it shifted the start time for Boxing by 30 minutes.^[11] WABD continued to distribute Boxing to a dwindling affiliate base until the last broadcast on August 4, 1958, after a price dispute between the station and promoter Teddy Brenner; only five affiliates remained. WABD opted to air feature films in the time slot instead.^[12]

Episode status

About 60 episodes of the DuMont version survive at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. However, some of these episodes are from the non-network version which continued to run on WABD after the network closed (these are also notable due to the rarity of kinescopes of local programming aired on United States television stations during the 1950s).

See also

• List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
• List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
• 1954-55 United States network television schedule
• 1955-56 United States network television schedule
• Boxing from Jamaica Arena (July 1940-May 1942, 1946-1949)
• Amateur Boxing Fight Club (September 1949 – 1950)
• Wrestling from Marigold (September 1949 – 1955)
• Boxing from Eastern Parkway (May 1952-May 1954)
• Saturday Night at the Garden (1950-1951)
• HBO Boxing (1973-2018)

• 1950s portal