Ziv Company
| Industry | Entertainment |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1937 |
| Headquarters | Cincinnati, Ohio, United States |
| Products | Syndicated radio and television programs |
| Owner | Frederic Ziv |
Frederic W. Ziv Company (also given as Frederick W. Ziv Company) 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."
Frederic Ziv, the company's founder, developed his ideas for the company while operating an advertising agency in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the era of old-time radio, "Cincinnati was a surprisingly active regional center for radio production." Two business entities contributed to that situation. First, radio station WLW in Cincinnati was "a major source of radio programming that offered local stations an alternative to network-originated programming." Second, in an era when sponsors produced most radio programs, Cincinnati was the headquarters of Procter & Gamble, one of radio's "most influential advertisers."
Ziv's Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan proved useful in his work in syndication. Michael J. Neufeld wrote in his book, Spacefarers: Images of Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Heroic Era of Spaceflight, "Ziv envisioned every sales pitch as a legal argument, anticipating counterarguments and preparing rejoinders beforehand."
While producing programs for WLW, Ziv met writer John L. Sinn, and in 1937 they began Frederic W. Ziv Company as a program syndication business.
The Ziv Company offered an opportunity to local and regional businesses that could not afford to produce programs whose quality would match that of network programs. Ziv's alternative was the use of transcriptions — programs recorded on discs and offered to local advertisers in each radio market. Charges for the programs were based on the market's size. The result was "affordable quality programming that could be scheduled in any available slot on a station's schedule."
In an interview in Irv Broughton's book, Producers on Producing: The Making of Film and Television, Ziv noted that, although he was often called the "father of syndication," the concept was not original with him. "That's the tag that followed me," he said, "and is still being used. I developed the technique; I didn't originate it. I'm not sure if anyone preceded me. I did expand on it and brought it to what was probably its highest level." Hal Erickson wrote in Syndicated Television: The First Forty Years, 1947-1987, "It was Frederick [sic] W. Ziv who brought sophistication to syndication, turning it into a science, combining modern recording techniques with a masterful sense of merchandising."
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