Ziv Television Programs

Ziv Television Programs, Inc. was an American production company that specialized in productions for first-run television syndication in the 1950s.
History.
The company was founded by Frederick Ziv in 1948 and was a subsidiary of his successful radio syndication business, which had begun in 1937. The company produced recorded programs and sold them directly to local television stations. The television syndication service proved lucrative during the late 1940s and early 1950s, as local television stations wanted to fill their schedules during hours outside of "prime time". By 1955, Ziv was producing more than 250 half-hour TV episodes a year.
As the Big Three television networks began offering programs outside of prime time, Ziv's popularity and business began to decline. The market for first-run syndicated television programming began to dwindle, and the company, to attempt to save its business, began to produce programs which aired over the networks in 1956. In 1960, the company was purchased by United Artists and merged with their television unit to become Ziv-United Artists, but two years later, the name changed back to United Artists Television after the TV studio phased out Ziv Television Programs' operations.
Today, most of the rights to Ziv's TV shows are distributed by MGM Television, SFM Entertainment, and the Sony Pictures Television; while some of them have fallen into the public domain.
ZIV International, on the other hand, was established as an unrelated production company and distributor of Americanized anime shows in the 1970s and 1980s. This company was linked to this former organization only by the similarity of its name.