98:(also given as Frederick W. Ziv Company) that produced syndicated radio and television programs in the United States. Horace Newcomb's Encyclopedia of Television described the company as "by 1948 ... the largest packager and syndicator of radio programs" and later "the most prolific producer of programming for the first-run syndication market during the 1950s.". They produced pre-recorded radio shows such as
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as Dan
Mathews, maybe the first crime drama to show that large urban regions were not the only places where criminals liked to roam. The company's closing logo, the name Ziv in large, Romanesque lettering, inside the frame of a television tube, was one of the most familiar sign-off logos of its time.
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that exploded that same year, but Ziv was very unhappy about it. "They demanded script and cast approvals." - he was quoted as saying. "You were just doing whatever the networks asked you to do, but that wasn't my type of operation. I didn’t care to become an employee for the networks."
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Ziv's fortunes shifted almost overnight in the mid-1950s. In 1955, they were
America's leading and largest independent producer, with a reported two thousand employees at one point and Ziv was able to buy his own television production studio, after years of leasing from the
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In preparation for providing programming for television syndication, Ziv began purchasing film libraries. By July 1948, the company had bought four such libraries—General, Miles, Kinogram and
Forster—providing a total of more than 13 million feet of film.
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in Ann Arbor in 1928, Ziv did not practice law, but instead opened an advertising agency. His native city, Cincinnati, was an important center for radio in the 1920s. The nation's largest radio sponsor,
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Ziv
Television Productions trademarks included odd for the times twists on the genres of his shows, twists such as a crime-fighting underwater explorer (
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noted that Ziv "was known throughout the television industry for pioneering production, sales, promotion and marketing of TV series."
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and occasionally bought old shows for new syndicated rerun broadcast. The best known was the serial comedy
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In 1960, Ziv sold 80% of his company to a group of investors and sold his own TV production subsidiary to
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immigrants: his father
William, a manufacturer of button holes for overalls, came to the US in 1884 from
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By 1959, the networks began taking control of what went on the air from sponsors, a major result of the
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and once operated the nation's largest independent television production company. An obituary in
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and served as "distinguished
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three years later. He had a sister named Irma. He graduated from Hughes High School.
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By that same year, 1948, the company had opened a television production subsidiary,
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He is buried in the United Jewish
Cemetery in his birth city, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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1920 census, Cincinnati, Hamilton Co. Ohio, enumerator district 225, sheet 12A
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Ziv died at the age of 96 in 2001. He was survived by a son and a daughter.
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studios. The following year, in 1956, the Big Three television networks,
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19:(August 17, 1905 – October 13, 2001, Cincinnati, Ohio) was an American
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The
Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows--1946 to Present
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annually presents a broadcasting achievement award in his name.
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were also Ziv's first-run syndicated television productions.
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Producers on
Producing: The Making of Film and Television
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409:(Urbana, Ill.: Illinois University Press, 1980).
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