Frederick William Ziv

Frederick William Ziv was born on August 17, 1905. He was an American broadcasting producer and syndicator who was considered as the father of television first-run syndication and once operated the nation's largest independent television production company. An obituary in The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that Ziv "was known throughout the television industry for pioneering production, sales, promotion and marketing of TV series."

Frederick Ziv was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to William and Rose Ziv. His parents were Jewish immigrants: his father William, a manufacturer of button holes for overalls, came to the US in 1884 from Kelm, Lithuania and his mother Rose from Bessarabia three years later. He had a sister named Irma. He graduated from Hughes High School.

He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1928, however, Ziv did not practice law, but instead opened an advertising agency. His birth city, Cincinnati, was an important center for radio in the 1920s. The nation's largest radio sponsor, Procter & Gamble, and one of its most powerful radio stations, WLW, were based there. Ziv and writer John L. Sinn, who later became his business partner and son-in-law, founded the Frederic W. Ziv Company (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 Boston Blackie and The Cisco Kid and occasionally bought old shows for new syndicated rerun broadcast. The best known was the serial comedy Easy Aces in 1945.

Ziv sold his company to United Artists in 1959 for $20 million. He later taught for 22 years at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music, which presents an award for broadcasting achievement in his name each year.

By the 1950s, Ziv's company was the largest privately owned TV film firm in the industry, with nearly 2,000 employees worldwide.

Ziv died at the age of 96 on October 13, 2001. He was survived by a son and a daughter.
He is buried in the United Jewish Cemetery in his city, Cincinnati, Ohio.