FREDERIC ZIV - 1905-2001
FRED ZIV: KING OF SYNDICATION
Frederic W. Ziv was a man of many gifts - a visionary, a writer, a producer - yet none were as great as his ability to sell.
Ziv’s tireless mission was producing and selling his syndicated radio and television programs, then making sure that the stations and advertisers who bought them were successful because of them. As a result, Ziv became known as The King of Syndication with nearly 70 different radio and television series in circulation when he sold his company for over $21 Million in 1960.
Ziv was 25 with a law degree from the University of Michigan when he opened the one-room F.W. Ziv advertising agency in his hometown of Cincinnati in September, 1930. The man who would eventually work with famous names and Academy Award winners produced his first program for a client on WLW/Cincinnati - Oklahoma Bob Albright & His Mountain Music.*
More local programs followed, all specifically tailored by Ziv to meet his clients’ marketing needs. As he told Sponsor magazine in 1959: “I realized that there were dozens of agency men who knew ten times what I did about magazine and newspaper advertising. But nobody knew anything about radio in those days. It was the one field where a young man could be an expert. So I decided to concentrate on radio.”
Ziv’s first brush with syndication began with his 1936 slogan, The Freshest Thing In Town, created for Cincinnati’s Rubel Baking Company to sell packaged rye bread. A print and billboard blitz featured a rascally looking little boy - not unlike the kids in the popular Hal Roach Our Gang movie shorts. The campaign was extended into Cincinnati radio with a weekday afternoon serial written by Ziv - ala Little Orphan Annie - and Rubel‘s bread sales soared.
Ziv sold The Freshest Thing In Town advertising package and transcribed radio shows to bakeries outside of Cincinnati beginning in late 1936. The radio series was recorded from live broadcasts and shipped to Chicago for duplication by the World Broadcasting System transcription service. With those sales The Frederic W. Ziv Company Radio Productions was born.
In December, 1936, Ziv, hired John Sinn, a young copywriter at WLW as his assistant. Two years later he hired M.R. (Bud) Rifkin as his sales promotion manager. Sinn and Rifkin remained Fred Ziv’s closest lieutenants and like their boss, both were staunch advocates of fielding the best trained salesmen in the business armed with the strongest and most complete marketing plans possible for their programs and their clients.
Ziv eventually employed 65 research and marketing specialists at the home office in Cincinnati to support his sales staff throughout the country, explaining, “I have always believed in surrounding a program with all the merchandising and promotional devices which will make it a complete marketing tool for the advertiser.”
Ziv expanded into the flourishing market of soap operas in 1938 with Dearest Mother, described in the program’s sales material as, “A thrilling day-to-day drama of heart-stirring romance and pulse-quickening action… Warm and true to life, each day’s episode opens and closes wit the young girl writing a letter to her mother.”
This was immediately followed by Forbidden Diary - “Suspense and mystery are enhanced as each episode opens with the diary writer reading from her pages and then it fades for the dramatization of the important events she is about to reveal.”
Important to these series was the establishment of Ziv’s pricing policy based on the population of the market in which the programs were broadcast. The smallest markets were charged $15 a week and the largest paid $125 a week. (A range of $200 to $2,100 in today’s money.) Prices increased over the years but charges based on market size remained.
Another area of listener interest was explored in 1939 when Ziv debuted One For The Books, a series of 192 five-minute anecdotes of sports history narrated by Los Angeles sportscaster Sam Balter. As was the case with all of his projects, Ziv supervised the writing, production and promotion of the program.
It was back to soap operas the next year with The Career of Alice Blair starring 28 year old Martha Scott who was nominated for a 1941 Academy Award as Best Actress. Described in Ziv sales material as, “…An ambitious girl who trades her small home in Middletown for the immenseness of New York City in pursuit of a career and happiness.” The story was told in 130 quarter hour chapters and sold to major stations including WOR/New York City and CBS-owned WJSV/Washington, D.C.
Like many Ziv programs, its opening and closing are musical pads over which local station announcers would read the appropriate show and commercial credits.
Ziv’s entry into music programming was a strange one. It began by chance in 1941 when Fred discovered a six-man novelty band called Schnicklefritz in a Cincinnati restaurant. He signed the band for 130 quarter-hour programs and renamed the sextet The Korn Kobblers. The show was sold to over a hundred stations by the end of the year. The band’s success resulted in two contract renewals and a total of 376 programs recorded and syndicated by Ziv.
The company added another novelty music show to its roster in 1941 - but unlike Korn Kobblers, the 15-minute Old Corral was produced by an outside firm, Disco Productions of St. Louis . The country music show starring Merle Travis was sold outright to Ziv for only $110 per program and over a hundred quarter-hours were produced for syndication.
Ziv shifted from entertainment to reality programming in 1942 with Eye Witness News - a series of 15-minute dramatized World War II news stories from Associated Press correspondents. The contract called for the AP to pay Ziv up to $500 for the production of each program then receive 60% of all revenues until its costs were recovered. After that, the wire service and syndicator equally split all revenues above sales costs. The unique and timely program with veteran network actors Maurice Tarplin, Roger de Koven, Humphrey Davis and Lon Clark was another Ziv success and resulted in 162 episodes dating from December 28, 1942 until the end of the war.
Eye Witness News inspired another series with Associated Press, War Correspondent, 78 quarter-hours based on the experiences of the AP’s correspondents covering the war. For this 1943 human interest series Ziv called upon known network names - veteran newscaster John B. Kennedy and announcer Jimmy Wallington, then backed their narrations with a 35-piece studio orchestra.
Two more 15-minute entertainment series were produced by Ziv in 1943 - Songs of Good Cheer, a series of 117 shows featuring Gerald Sears’ studio orchestra and chorus, and Manhunt, a detective series of 39 free standing episodes employing the voices Ziv had used in Eye Witness News plus veteran radio actors Larry Haines, Jean Ellyn, Ed Begley, Jackson Beck and Betty Cashman.
The question of who would win World War II seemed settled by late 1943 - it was simply a matter of when. To Fred Ziv the end of the war meant the end of wartime restrictions prohibiting the construction of new radio stations. His market would boom and he wanted to be ready with programs and names that sold themselves to stations and listeners. It also meant expanding into half-hour programs to compete with network prime time shows.
Ziv took a trip to Hollywood looking for a property that would fit his new criteria for syndication. He found it in Boston Blackie, by 1943 a popular series of seven Columbia movies starring Chester Morris. There would eventually be 14 Blackie films based on author Jack Boyle’s character.
As Ziv told historian Dr. Morleen Getz Rouse in a 1974 interview, “…I went to the types of studios where action-adventure programs were being produced - such as Charlie Chan and The Cisco Kid. I went to Monogram Pictures studio and found a fellow named Lou Irwin. We stuck up a conversation and the next thing I knew we were talking about Boston Blackie. He represented that he could deliver the rights to Blackie…”
Ziv and the Boyle estate’s agents agreed to a five year contract in January, 1944, paying the estate a royalty fee of $200 per program, escalating annually to $300 by the fifth year. Then, in a switch of his intent, Ziv sold Boston Blackie to NBC as that year’s 13 week summer replacement for Amos & Andy. By Ziv standards it was a costly production at almost $2,500 a week, with $1,000 going to Chester Morris in the title role and $250 to Dick Lane as his nemesis, Inspector Faraday.
Boston Blackie’s ratings grew from a 6.9 in June to 8.2 in September, edging out such established Friday night programs as Double Or Nothing, It Pays To Be Ignorant, Jimmy Durante & Garry Moore and Waltz Time. It confirmed Ziv’s decision that a syndicated version of Boston Blackie could be very profitable.
Production of the show for syndication began at WOR/New York on April 11, 1945, with Richard Kollmar and Maurice Tarplin replacing Morris and Lane as the leads and trimming almost a thousand dollars off each week’s budget.
Boston Blackie was priced like all Ziv shows according to the size of the market in which it was broadcast - ten dollars a week in the smallest cities to $400 a week in the largest. Hundreds of stations bought the show for local sale and Ziv produced 220 programs in the series. An episode is posted below - again with only music at the program’s beginning and closing as instrumental pads for local sponsor credits and announcements.
Ziv partnered with Parents’ Magazine in 1944 to produce two specialty series, Calling All Girls, three years of weekly quarter-hour shows for the teenage market and department store sponsors, and Parents’ Magazine of The Air, 52 half-hours of information for families and general sponsorship. Both series were successful and received commendations from civic groups but strayed from Ziv’s primary focus of famous names and escapist entertainment.
He returned to the formula in October, 1944, when he bought 104 episodes of Lightning Jim for the bargain basement price of $3,300. The half-hour Western series starring legendary screen star Francis X. Bushman had already run in Chicago and a few other cities for Meadow Gold dairy products and Oscar Mayer meats. Ziv dressed the program for prospective sponsors with a marketing package that included contests, giveaways and Marshal Lightning Jim merchandise. It didn’t take long for his investment to show a handsome profit.
More re-packaging of previously broadcast material followed in April, 1945, when Ziv signed Goodman & Jane Ace to re-record a number of their 1,400 Easy Aces scripts which they had performed on CBS, NBC and Blue since 1932. Ziv deftly predicted that Goodman’s dry humor and Jane’s incessant malapropisms, ( “We’re insufferable friends,” “We’re all cremated equal,” etc.), were timeless. He was right.
In its first year of syndication, gross sales of Ziv’s transcribed Easy Aces totaled over $450,000. Eventually, a total of 763 quarter-hours were produced. An episode is posted below.
Concurrent with Easy Aces syndication, Ziv began a string of four music shows featuring famous names. The first, in May, 1945, was Sincerely, Kenny Baker, 130 quarter hour programs starring the tenor known to listeners from his appearances with Jack Benny, and Fred Allen, and his 1944 co-host role on CBS’s Blue Ribbon Town.
Three months later Ziv signed veteran bandleader Vincent Lopez, singer Dick Brown and The Modernaires for 138 quarter-hours of Pleasure Parade.
Next was the 15-minute Barry Wood Show co-starring Margaret Whiting. Timing of the show was unique because Wood was also the star of Johnny Presents on CBS and Whiting hosted the network’s Celebrity Club when the Ziv series went into syndication. Station contracts stipulated that the program could not be broadcast opposite their network shows. Nevertheless, Ziv got top dollar for the show. For example, KFI/Los Angeles paid $320 for the 15 minute program. By 1947, The Barry Wood Show grossed over $275,000 in syndicated sales for Ziv.
Then Ziv signed Wayne King, one of Network Radio’s most popular bandleaders, for a half-hour series in April, 1946. Details and one of the 52 programs in this slickly produced series are found at the post The Waltz King on this site.
Ziv gave Boston Blackie a companion detective program in June, 1946, when he bought the radio rights to Philo Vance for $15,600 and a percentage of revenues. Author S.S. Van Dyne’s Vance had been the hero of 12 novels and a dozen movies. So Ziv had the name recognition for his series starring Jackson Beck which resulted in 104 half-hour episodes and another sales success for the company. An open-ended episode is also posted below.
No Ziv series, however, matched the success of the character introduced in O’Henry’s 1907 novel, The Caballero’s Way, who became the hero of 1928’s film, In Old Arizona, for which Warner Baxter won an Academy Award.
During Fred Ziv’s trip to Hollywood in 1943, he bought options to The Cisco Kid and put it aside until he felt the time was right for, “O’Henry’s Robin Hood of the West.” Meanwhile, Mutual produced a weekly version of the Western for three seasons ending in early 1945.
That time was right for Ziv on Monday, March 4, 1946, when KHJ/Los Angeles and the Don Lee Network of West Coast stations lost broadcast rights to The Lone Ranger. The Cisco Kid rode to the rescue on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights at 7:30 p.m. (PT), sponsored by Interstate Bakeries’ Weber Bread. The live KHJ broadcasts starring Jack Mather and Harry Lang were recorded for Ziv’s editing and syndication.
Success was immediate. Interstate’s advertising agency, Dan B. Miner, reported that within several months Los Angeles Hooperatings ranked The Cisco Kid in 33rd place of all programs with a 7.8 rating compared to The Lone Ranger’s 3.4 rating in 107th place.
That was the kind of ammunition that Ziv salesmen relentlessly fired at prospects all over the country. Backed with powerful promotion and marketing devices specifically designed for the show, selling The Cisco Kid became a matter of shooting fish in a barrel. Over the next nine years, 833 episodes were produced and sold - again and again in approximately 300 markets.
Ziv’s gross billings in 1946 passed $7.5 Million and John Sinn told Radio Daily in May, 1947, that the company’s 22 syndicated series were being broadcast by over 675 stations in the United States. It was about that time when Fred Ziv was attracted to a dramatic series broadcast locally by KFI/Los Angeles.
Favorite Story was the brainchild of two Armed Forces Radio veterans, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, who later became the playwrights responsible for Inherit The Wind and Auntie Mame. The partners adapted famous stories from literature for half-hour radio presentations using the abundant pool of Hollywood radio actors. Ziv saw their concept as his perfect entry into prestige dramatic programming and formed a partnership with Lawrence & Lee. For good measure and more prestige, Ziv signed publisher George Putnam as their editorial consultant.
To put a capital “P” on Prestige, Ziv persuaded distinguished actor Ronald Colman to be Favorite Story’s host and occasional star. The 56 year old Colman was no stranger to radio with a dozen appearances on Lux Radio Theater and frequent guest shots with his wife, Benita Hume, as Jack Benny’s long suffering neighbors.
Ziv guaranteed Colman $5,000 for each group of twelve shows he narrated and $3,500 for each 13th show in which he narrated and starred - plus ten percent of each 13 shows’ revenues with a $7,500 cap. The deal made headlines in the trade press and beyond. Time called it, “…an earthquake that might upset the whole map of U.S, commercial radio….if other stars leave the networks for transcriptions.”
Ziv capitalized on that free publicity with a national contest, offering a $1,000 prize for the best entry nominating a favorite story from literature and another $500 bounty to the station judged best in promoting the contest. Colman added more fuel to Favorite Story’s promotional fire a year later when he won 1948‘s Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance in A Double Life.
It all resulted in tremendous success. Favorite Story helped push Ziv's 1947 gross revenues up 30% to an estimated $10.4 Million. Even network affiliates were buying the transcribed program, including NBC-owned WMAQ/Chicago, which paid Ziv over $20,000 a year for Favorite Story. A total of 117 episodes were produced and by February, 1950, total gross revenues for the show reached $675,000.
Ziv expanded into more big band programming in late 1947 when he signed Freddy Martin’s orchestra for 78 half-hour shows titled It‘s Showtime From Hollywood. Rights to the show were quickly bought by the Norge Division of Borg-Warner which offered it to its distributors and retailers for local broadcast. Over the next four years Ziv grossed $390,000 from the program.
The most profitable of Ziv’s music shows came from Guy Lombardo, whose orchestra like Wayne King and Freddy Martin, played “sweet” music and was considered outdated by younger listeners. But Lombardo was still popular with older audiences, including most station executives and sponsors. Within a year The Guy Lombardo Show was broadcast in 273 U.S. radio markets, easily grossing an estimated $300,000 annually. The original contract with Lombardo called for 52 half-hour programs, then renewed and expanded to 156. Details and an episode of this show are posted at Guy Lombardo on this site.
In August, 1948, Ziv purchased the World Broadcasting System from Decca Records $1.5 Million. World’s library service gave Ziv another revenue source - over 2,100 performances by top musical artists and a huge collection of sound effects and background music. The new owners began transforming World into a feature program service with titles Homemaking Harmonies and The People Choose along with news and sports capsules complete with promotion and merchandising materials. Two years later, with the push of Ziv's sales force, World reported 763 stations subscribing to its service and in October, 1953, KSFO/San Francisco brought the number to 1,000 .
Although the FCC’s four year freeze on new television station construction began in 1948, Ziv knew it was time to get into video. He bought the General Film Libraries of New York and California for $340,000. Footage from those sources with voice-over narration provided material for the 15-minute Yesterday’s Newsreel and five-minute Sports Album.
Ziv’s Vice President John Sinn was named President of Ziv Television Programs, Inc. With only two programs and a 1948 market of just 52 TV stations, it was an inconspicuous start for a company that would eventually become the world’s largest independent producer of television programs.
Then it was announced that Ziv would begin filmed production of its first television program, The Cisco Kid starring Duncan Renaldo, who had played Cisco in eight movies and Leo Carrillo who had appeared as his sidekick Pancho. And unlike any other filmed programs of the day, it would be shot entirely in color.
Fred Ziv wrote the pilot show and the series was immediately bought by Cisco’s first radio sponsor, Interstate Bakeries, for ten years in 16 television markets. Then NBC bought it for its owned and operated television stations in New York, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco for $1.0 Million in a five year deal. Eventually 156 episodes were produced and when other early series looked dated in black and white, the colorful Cisco Kid appeared fresh in reruns for decades.
Boston Blackie starring Kent Taylor followed the next year with 58 episodes and Ziv Television Productions was off and running.
But radio was still Ziv’s cash cow in 1949 and with the postwar boom in AM stations - 710 new stations since 1945 - the company continued its practice of quality programming and major stars.
Ziv rolled out his first sitcom, the half-hour Bright Star with movie stars Irene Dunne, Fred MacMurray and Harry Von Zell. In three years the show generated $500,000 in revenues. An episode is posted below.
Ziv also ventured into talk shows in 1949 with Adolphe Menjou and his wife Verree Teasdale in Meet The Menjous, which eventually resulted in 520 quarter-hour episodes.
Business was booming in 1950 and the company added 60 new salesmen - well-trained and armed to the hilt with research and success stories - whose specialty was helping client radio and television stations sell Ziv shows to sponsors.
Ziv’s penchant for big names resulted in his getting two of the biggest in December, 1950. Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, signed to star in the half-hour adventure series Bold Venture. When it went on the air four months later, 423 stations had bought the show resulting in an estimated $1.3 Million in gross sales in its first year of syndication. For details and audio examples, see Bogart & Bacall’s Bold Venture on this site.
More big names were added to the Ziv radio portfolio in 1951 when the company bought seven-year rights to the 52 half-hours formerly broadcast as The Skippy Hollywood Theater for $36,855 and re-packaged the series as Movietown Radio Theater. When Ziv's marketing department went to work, Movietown Radio Theater was the focus of a national Name The Stars contest offering prizes from major manufacturers. The effectiveness was evident in 1954 when Movietown Radio Theater's gross revenues were $205,000 - a single year’s gain of 556% over its original cost for seven years!
Anti-Communist feelings ran high in 1951. Ziv responded by paying $10,000 for the radio rights to Matt Cvetic’s I Was A Communist For The FBI - originally a Saturday Evening Post serial and then a 1951 Warner Brothers film. With movie star Dana Andrews in its lead and a production budget of $12,500 per episode, the series was pre-sold in 389 markets before its premiere in 1952. The first program in the series is also posted below.
The success of I Was A Communist For The FBI led Ziv to sign movie star Tyrone Power to star in a 52 episode patriotic series about a young U.S. Senator, Freedom U.S.A. The series was pre-sold in 500 markets before it aired.
Ziv's annual radio production budget was $2.0 Million as declining ratings and revenues signaled the end of Network Radio’s Golden Age in 1953. Ironically, it was a record high year for Ziv’s radio and television revenues, a whopping 50% over 1952.
While Network Radio divisions had shrunk, the Ziv payroll had grown to 1,500 employees with regional offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Cleveland and Cincinnati. The company also maintained district sales offices in Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Harrisburg, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Memphis, Minneapolis-St Paul, Peoria, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Tulsa and Youngstown. Clients knew that marketing help from a Ziv representative familiar with their area was always nearby and available.
Ziv’s 33rd and final radio series of the Golden Age was The Hour of Stars - a 60 minute combination of four 15-minute segments - Music Time With Dick Powell, Peggy Lee Picks The Tunes, Tony Martin‘s Song Parade and The Ginger Rogers Show. Each of the stars was contracted to record 260 quarter hours, enough for 52 weeks of weekday strips and they were paid handsomely for their effort - Lee received $23,000, Powell and Rogers each got $30,000 and Martin took home $57,000. Like Freedom U.S.A., The Hour of Stars was pre-sold in 500 markets.
Television was increasingly becoming the major thrust of Ziv marketing in 1953. The company had six filmed series on the air including The Cisco Kid, Boston Blackie, The Living Book, Story Theater plus two new highly popular shows, Favorite Story, a TV version of Ziv’s successful radio series with host Adolphe Menjou, and I Led Three Lives starring Richard Carlson, an undercover agent drama similar to radio’s I Was A Communist For The FBI.
I Led Three Lives was Ziv’s most popular new television release to that time with first month sales in 94 markets. It was hailed as, "The largest commercial television network ever built," headed by NBC's WNBT(TV)/New York City. A year later the list had nearly doubled to 178 markets. Its leading sponsors were Phillips Petroleum in 25 Midwest markets and Coors Beer on ten Rocky Mountain stations.
Ziv had become the largest independent television producer using leased facilities at the historic California, (fka Famous Players), Studios in Hollywood. That changed in December, 1954, when the company purchased the six-acre American National Studios, (fka Grand National Studios and Eagle Lion Studios), on Santa Monica Boulevard for a reported $2.0 Million.
The new studios gave Ziv expanded space to turn out another two dozen series over the next six years. Among them were the wildly popular Sea Hunt starring Lloyd Bridges and Highway Patrol with tough talking Academy Award winner Broderick Crawford. Both fit Ziv’s stated formula for television success: “Action, movement, adventure, mystery and law enforcement.”
“Most of my shows were about the chase”, he later told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “We had the chase on horseback, the chase on the highway, the chase underwater and the chase in the air. The chase provides a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of tension. But it all begins with the paper - a good script.”
Departing from his normal procedures, Ziv produced seven series for network television during this period: West Point, Harbor Master and Men Into Space, (CBS), Tombstone Territory and Rough Riders, (ABC), and Bat Masterson and The Man And The Challenge, (NBC). For syndication purposes, Ziv released television versions of more familiar names from Network Radio; Mr. District Attorney, Meet Corliss Archer, Dr. Christian and The Man Called X .
In the case of Mr. District Attorney, Ziv took a page from his Cisco Kid and Boston Blackie playbook by simultaneously producing a radio and television version of the longtime Network Radio favorite with David Bryan in the title role. Both series enjoyed sales success, justifying the $200,000 paid to Phillips H. Lord for the radio and television rights to the character he created in 1939.
Although Ziv’s primary production focus had turned to television, the company’s radio penetration was never greater. Billboard’s 1954 survey indicated that Ziv programs accounted for more than 15 hours of total airtime a week in 325 cities. As examples of major market acceptance, radio stations in Cleveland broadcast 16 hours of Ziv programs a week, New Orleans stations broadcast 23 hours, Boston stations aired 26 and Dallas-Fort Worth stations programmed 33 hours.
Instead of shying away from radio, Ziv pursued two famed comedians in 1954 to revive their fading radio careers - Red Skelton and Eddie Cantor. The 260 half hours of The Red Skelton Show were re-edited material recorded from past network broadcasts with wrap around narrations provided by Skelton. Ziv’s Eddie Cantor Radio Show was an original production of 258 half hours starring the comedian with announcer Jimmy Wallington plus singers Roy Edwards and Patti Lewis. Sales of both series were brisk.
Skelton was still active in television with a weekly show on CBS-TV. But Cantor’s heart attack in 1952 had limited his work in live television and that gave Ziv an idea. The two signed a contract in 1954 for 39 episodes of what Billboard hailed as, “…the most lavish single syndication venture in the history of the business…” The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater was intended to be a filmed half hour similar to the 63 year old comedian’s appearances on NBC-TV’s Colgate Comedy Hour. Although the show was sold in 101 markets it fell short of critical expectations and resulted in what Cantor biographer Herbert Goldman called, “Cantor’s most excruciating professional failure.”
Two more “paste-up” shows completed Ziv’s radio catalog. In 1955, the company obtained syndication rights to the popular Breakfast With Dorothy & Dick from WOR/New York. Columnist Dorothy Killgallen and her husband Richard Kollmar, (Ziv’s radio Boston Blackie), had conducted the popular chat show since 1945 and Ziv transcribed their live broadcasts for distribution to other markets. The last project for Fredric W. Ziv Company Radio Productions was The Fred Waring Show - 156 half-hour compilations of the popular Pennsylvanians’ orchestra and choral recordings with additional voice tracks recorded by Waring.
Ziv’s gross revenues for 1959 reached $25.0 Million. Ziv was only 54 years old but he and his longtime associates John Sinn and Bud Rifkin, decided it was time to sell the company. As he explained to Dr. Morleen Rouse, “The reason I sold my business is because I recognized that the (television) networks were taking command of everything and were permitting the independent producers no room at all. I didn’t care to become an employee of the networks.”
Several financial dealings were involved before United Artists bought Ziv Productions for $21.75 Million in 1960. Fred Ziv’s one-man office in Cincinnati had grown to 1,800 employees in the company’s 21 offices in the United States with international sales offices iToronto, London, Paris, Mexico City and Tokyo.
Not one for retiring, Ziv joined the faculty of the Division of Broadcasting in the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where he taught broadcasting history and production techniques for the next 22 years. He could also have taught his students a thing or two about selling.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cincinnati in 1985 and died in 2001 at the age of 96.
Little was written about him during his career and even less since his passing. Yet, although he never owned a station or controlled a network, Fred Ziv was truly one of the giants of broadcasting during and beyond Network Radio’s Golden Age.
* Much of the Ziv historic information in this report appears in Dr. Morleen Getz Rouse’s 1976 University of Michigan PHD dissertation, The History of F.W. Ziv Radio & Television Syndication Companies, 1930-1960. Our thanks to Mike Martini at Cincinnati's Media Heritage for making this work available for our study.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Frederic W. Ziv was a man of many gifts - a visionary, a writer, a producer - yet none were as great as his ability to sell.
Ziv’s tireless mission was producing and selling his syndicated radio and television programs, then making sure that the stations and advertisers who bought them were successful because of them. As a result, Ziv became known as The King of Syndication with nearly 70 different radio and television series in circulation when he sold his company for over $21 Million in 1960.
Ziv was 25 with a law degree from the University of Michigan when he opened the one-room F.W. Ziv advertising agency in his hometown of Cincinnati in September, 1930. The man who would eventually work with famous names and Academy Award winners produced his first program for a client on WLW/Cincinnati - Oklahoma Bob Albright & His Mountain Music.*
More local programs followed, all specifically tailored by Ziv to meet his clients’ marketing needs. As he told Sponsor magazine in 1959: “I realized that there were dozens of agency men who knew ten times what I did about magazine and newspaper advertising. But nobody knew anything about radio in those days. It was the one field where a young man could be an expert. So I decided to concentrate on radio.”
Ziv’s first brush with syndication began with his 1936 slogan, The Freshest Thing In Town, created for Cincinnati’s Rubel Baking Company to sell packaged rye bread. A print and billboard blitz featured a rascally looking little boy - not unlike the kids in the popular Hal Roach Our Gang movie shorts. The campaign was extended into Cincinnati radio with a weekday afternoon serial written by Ziv - ala Little Orphan Annie - and Rubel‘s bread sales soared.
Ziv sold The Freshest Thing In Town advertising package and transcribed radio shows to bakeries outside of Cincinnati beginning in late 1936. The radio series was recorded from live broadcasts and shipped to Chicago for duplication by the World Broadcasting System transcription service. With those sales The Frederic W. Ziv Company Radio Productions was born.
In December, 1936, Ziv, hired John Sinn, a young copywriter at WLW as his assistant. Two years later he hired M.R. (Bud) Rifkin as his sales promotion manager. Sinn and Rifkin remained Fred Ziv’s closest lieutenants and like their boss, both were staunch advocates of fielding the best trained salesmen in the business armed with the strongest and most complete marketing plans possible for their programs and their clients.
Ziv eventually employed 65 research and marketing specialists at the home office in Cincinnati to support his sales staff throughout the country, explaining, “I have always believed in surrounding a program with all the merchandising and promotional devices which will make it a complete marketing tool for the advertiser.”
Ziv expanded into the flourishing market of soap operas in 1938 with Dearest Mother, described in the program’s sales material as, “A thrilling day-to-day drama of heart-stirring romance and pulse-quickening action… Warm and true to life, each day’s episode opens and closes wit the young girl writing a letter to her mother.”
This was immediately followed by Forbidden Diary - “Suspense and mystery are enhanced as each episode opens with the diary writer reading from her pages and then it fades for the dramatization of the important events she is about to reveal.”
Important to these series was the establishment of Ziv’s pricing policy based on the population of the market in which the programs were broadcast. The smallest markets were charged $15 a week and the largest paid $125 a week. (A range of $200 to $2,100 in today’s money.) Prices increased over the years but charges based on market size remained.
Another area of listener interest was explored in 1939 when Ziv debuted One For The Books, a series of 192 five-minute anecdotes of sports history narrated by Los Angeles sportscaster Sam Balter. As was the case with all of his projects, Ziv supervised the writing, production and promotion of the program.
It was back to soap operas the next year with The Career of Alice Blair starring 28 year old Martha Scott who was nominated for a 1941 Academy Award as Best Actress. Described in Ziv sales material as, “…An ambitious girl who trades her small home in Middletown for the immenseness of New York City in pursuit of a career and happiness.” The story was told in 130 quarter hour chapters and sold to major stations including WOR/New York City and CBS-owned WJSV/Washington, D.C.
Like many Ziv programs, its opening and closing are musical pads over which local station announcers would read the appropriate show and commercial credits.
Ziv’s entry into music programming was a strange one. It began by chance in 1941 when Fred discovered a six-man novelty band called Schnicklefritz in a Cincinnati restaurant. He signed the band for 130 quarter-hour programs and renamed the sextet The Korn Kobblers. The show was sold to over a hundred stations by the end of the year. The band’s success resulted in two contract renewals and a total of 376 programs recorded and syndicated by Ziv.
The company added another novelty music show to its roster in 1941 - but unlike Korn Kobblers, the 15-minute Old Corral was produced by an outside firm, Disco Productions of St. Louis . The country music show starring Merle Travis was sold outright to Ziv for only $110 per program and over a hundred quarter-hours were produced for syndication.
Ziv shifted from entertainment to reality programming in 1942 with Eye Witness News - a series of 15-minute dramatized World War II news stories from Associated Press correspondents. The contract called for the AP to pay Ziv up to $500 for the production of each program then receive 60% of all revenues until its costs were recovered. After that, the wire service and syndicator equally split all revenues above sales costs. The unique and timely program with veteran network actors Maurice Tarplin, Roger de Koven, Humphrey Davis and Lon Clark was another Ziv success and resulted in 162 episodes dating from December 28, 1942 until the end of the war.
Eye Witness News inspired another series with Associated Press, War Correspondent, 78 quarter-hours based on the experiences of the AP’s correspondents covering the war. For this 1943 human interest series Ziv called upon known network names - veteran newscaster John B. Kennedy and announcer Jimmy Wallington, then backed their narrations with a 35-piece studio orchestra.
Two more 15-minute entertainment series were produced by Ziv in 1943 - Songs of Good Cheer, a series of 117 shows featuring Gerald Sears’ studio orchestra and chorus, and Manhunt, a detective series of 39 free standing episodes employing the voices Ziv had used in Eye Witness News plus veteran radio actors Larry Haines, Jean Ellyn, Ed Begley, Jackson Beck and Betty Cashman.
The question of who would win World War II seemed settled by late 1943 - it was simply a matter of when. To Fred Ziv the end of the war meant the end of wartime restrictions prohibiting the construction of new radio stations. His market would boom and he wanted to be ready with programs and names that sold themselves to stations and listeners. It also meant expanding into half-hour programs to compete with network prime time shows.
Ziv took a trip to Hollywood looking for a property that would fit his new criteria for syndication. He found it in Boston Blackie, by 1943 a popular series of seven Columbia movies starring Chester Morris. There would eventually be 14 Blackie films based on author Jack Boyle’s character.
As Ziv told historian Dr. Morleen Getz Rouse in a 1974 interview, “…I went to the types of studios where action-adventure programs were being produced - such as Charlie Chan and The Cisco Kid. I went to Monogram Pictures studio and found a fellow named Lou Irwin. We stuck up a conversation and the next thing I knew we were talking about Boston Blackie. He represented that he could deliver the rights to Blackie…”
Ziv and the Boyle estate’s agents agreed to a five year contract in January, 1944, paying the estate a royalty fee of $200 per program, escalating annually to $300 by the fifth year. Then, in a switch of his intent, Ziv sold Boston Blackie to NBC as that year’s 13 week summer replacement for Amos & Andy. By Ziv standards it was a costly production at almost $2,500 a week, with $1,000 going to Chester Morris in the title role and $250 to Dick Lane as his nemesis, Inspector Faraday.
Boston Blackie’s ratings grew from a 6.9 in June to 8.2 in September, edging out such established Friday night programs as Double Or Nothing, It Pays To Be Ignorant, Jimmy Durante & Garry Moore and Waltz Time. It confirmed Ziv’s decision that a syndicated version of Boston Blackie could be very profitable.
Production of the show for syndication began at WOR/New York on April 11, 1945, with Richard Kollmar and Maurice Tarplin replacing Morris and Lane as the leads and trimming almost a thousand dollars off each week’s budget.
Boston Blackie was priced like all Ziv shows according to the size of the market in which it was broadcast - ten dollars a week in the smallest cities to $400 a week in the largest. Hundreds of stations bought the show for local sale and Ziv produced 220 programs in the series. An episode is posted below - again with only music at the program’s beginning and closing as instrumental pads for local sponsor credits and announcements.
Ziv partnered with Parents’ Magazine in 1944 to produce two specialty series, Calling All Girls, three years of weekly quarter-hour shows for the teenage market and department store sponsors, and Parents’ Magazine of The Air, 52 half-hours of information for families and general sponsorship. Both series were successful and received commendations from civic groups but strayed from Ziv’s primary focus of famous names and escapist entertainment.
He returned to the formula in October, 1944, when he bought 104 episodes of Lightning Jim for the bargain basement price of $3,300. The half-hour Western series starring legendary screen star Francis X. Bushman had already run in Chicago and a few other cities for Meadow Gold dairy products and Oscar Mayer meats. Ziv dressed the program for prospective sponsors with a marketing package that included contests, giveaways and Marshal Lightning Jim merchandise. It didn’t take long for his investment to show a handsome profit.
More re-packaging of previously broadcast material followed in April, 1945, when Ziv signed Goodman & Jane Ace to re-record a number of their 1,400 Easy Aces scripts which they had performed on CBS, NBC and Blue since 1932. Ziv deftly predicted that Goodman’s dry humor and Jane’s incessant malapropisms, ( “We’re insufferable friends,” “We’re all cremated equal,” etc.), were timeless. He was right.
In its first year of syndication, gross sales of Ziv’s transcribed Easy Aces totaled over $450,000. Eventually, a total of 763 quarter-hours were produced. An episode is posted below.
Concurrent with Easy Aces syndication, Ziv began a string of four music shows featuring famous names. The first, in May, 1945, was Sincerely, Kenny Baker, 130 quarter hour programs starring the tenor known to listeners from his appearances with Jack Benny, and Fred Allen, and his 1944 co-host role on CBS’s Blue Ribbon Town.
Three months later Ziv signed veteran bandleader Vincent Lopez, singer Dick Brown and The Modernaires for 138 quarter-hours of Pleasure Parade.
Next was the 15-minute Barry Wood Show co-starring Margaret Whiting. Timing of the show was unique because Wood was also the star of Johnny Presents on CBS and Whiting hosted the network’s Celebrity Club when the Ziv series went into syndication. Station contracts stipulated that the program could not be broadcast opposite their network shows. Nevertheless, Ziv got top dollar for the show. For example, KFI/Los Angeles paid $320 for the 15 minute program. By 1947, The Barry Wood Show grossed over $275,000 in syndicated sales for Ziv.
Then Ziv signed Wayne King, one of Network Radio’s most popular bandleaders, for a half-hour series in April, 1946. Details and one of the 52 programs in this slickly produced series are found at the post The Waltz King on this site.
Ziv gave Boston Blackie a companion detective program in June, 1946, when he bought the radio rights to Philo Vance for $15,600 and a percentage of revenues. Author S.S. Van Dyne’s Vance had been the hero of 12 novels and a dozen movies. So Ziv had the name recognition for his series starring Jackson Beck which resulted in 104 half-hour episodes and another sales success for the company. An open-ended episode is also posted below.
No Ziv series, however, matched the success of the character introduced in O’Henry’s 1907 novel, The Caballero’s Way, who became the hero of 1928’s film, In Old Arizona, for which Warner Baxter won an Academy Award.
During Fred Ziv’s trip to Hollywood in 1943, he bought options to The Cisco Kid and put it aside until he felt the time was right for, “O’Henry’s Robin Hood of the West.” Meanwhile, Mutual produced a weekly version of the Western for three seasons ending in early 1945.
That time was right for Ziv on Monday, March 4, 1946, when KHJ/Los Angeles and the Don Lee Network of West Coast stations lost broadcast rights to The Lone Ranger. The Cisco Kid rode to the rescue on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights at 7:30 p.m. (PT), sponsored by Interstate Bakeries’ Weber Bread. The live KHJ broadcasts starring Jack Mather and Harry Lang were recorded for Ziv’s editing and syndication.
Success was immediate. Interstate’s advertising agency, Dan B. Miner, reported that within several months Los Angeles Hooperatings ranked The Cisco Kid in 33rd place of all programs with a 7.8 rating compared to The Lone Ranger’s 3.4 rating in 107th place.
That was the kind of ammunition that Ziv salesmen relentlessly fired at prospects all over the country. Backed with powerful promotion and marketing devices specifically designed for the show, selling The Cisco Kid became a matter of shooting fish in a barrel. Over the next nine years, 833 episodes were produced and sold - again and again in approximately 300 markets.
Ziv’s gross billings in 1946 passed $7.5 Million and John Sinn told Radio Daily in May, 1947, that the company’s 22 syndicated series were being broadcast by over 675 stations in the United States. It was about that time when Fred Ziv was attracted to a dramatic series broadcast locally by KFI/Los Angeles.
Favorite Story was the brainchild of two Armed Forces Radio veterans, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, who later became the playwrights responsible for Inherit The Wind and Auntie Mame. The partners adapted famous stories from literature for half-hour radio presentations using the abundant pool of Hollywood radio actors. Ziv saw their concept as his perfect entry into prestige dramatic programming and formed a partnership with Lawrence & Lee. For good measure and more prestige, Ziv signed publisher George Putnam as their editorial consultant.
To put a capital “P” on Prestige, Ziv persuaded distinguished actor Ronald Colman to be Favorite Story’s host and occasional star. The 56 year old Colman was no stranger to radio with a dozen appearances on Lux Radio Theater and frequent guest shots with his wife, Benita Hume, as Jack Benny’s long suffering neighbors.
Ziv guaranteed Colman $5,000 for each group of twelve shows he narrated and $3,500 for each 13th show in which he narrated and starred - plus ten percent of each 13 shows’ revenues with a $7,500 cap. The deal made headlines in the trade press and beyond. Time called it, “…an earthquake that might upset the whole map of U.S, commercial radio….if other stars leave the networks for transcriptions.”
Ziv capitalized on that free publicity with a national contest, offering a $1,000 prize for the best entry nominating a favorite story from literature and another $500 bounty to the station judged best in promoting the contest. Colman added more fuel to Favorite Story’s promotional fire a year later when he won 1948‘s Academy Award as Best Actor for his performance in A Double Life.
It all resulted in tremendous success. Favorite Story helped push Ziv's 1947 gross revenues up 30% to an estimated $10.4 Million. Even network affiliates were buying the transcribed program, including NBC-owned WMAQ/Chicago, which paid Ziv over $20,000 a year for Favorite Story. A total of 117 episodes were produced and by February, 1950, total gross revenues for the show reached $675,000.
Ziv expanded into more big band programming in late 1947 when he signed Freddy Martin’s orchestra for 78 half-hour shows titled It‘s Showtime From Hollywood. Rights to the show were quickly bought by the Norge Division of Borg-Warner which offered it to its distributors and retailers for local broadcast. Over the next four years Ziv grossed $390,000 from the program.
The most profitable of Ziv’s music shows came from Guy Lombardo, whose orchestra like Wayne King and Freddy Martin, played “sweet” music and was considered outdated by younger listeners. But Lombardo was still popular with older audiences, including most station executives and sponsors. Within a year The Guy Lombardo Show was broadcast in 273 U.S. radio markets, easily grossing an estimated $300,000 annually. The original contract with Lombardo called for 52 half-hour programs, then renewed and expanded to 156. Details and an episode of this show are posted at Guy Lombardo on this site.
In August, 1948, Ziv purchased the World Broadcasting System from Decca Records $1.5 Million. World’s library service gave Ziv another revenue source - over 2,100 performances by top musical artists and a huge collection of sound effects and background music. The new owners began transforming World into a feature program service with titles Homemaking Harmonies and The People Choose along with news and sports capsules complete with promotion and merchandising materials. Two years later, with the push of Ziv's sales force, World reported 763 stations subscribing to its service and in October, 1953, KSFO/San Francisco brought the number to 1,000 .
Although the FCC’s four year freeze on new television station construction began in 1948, Ziv knew it was time to get into video. He bought the General Film Libraries of New York and California for $340,000. Footage from those sources with voice-over narration provided material for the 15-minute Yesterday’s Newsreel and five-minute Sports Album.
Ziv’s Vice President John Sinn was named President of Ziv Television Programs, Inc. With only two programs and a 1948 market of just 52 TV stations, it was an inconspicuous start for a company that would eventually become the world’s largest independent producer of television programs.
Then it was announced that Ziv would begin filmed production of its first television program, The Cisco Kid starring Duncan Renaldo, who had played Cisco in eight movies and Leo Carrillo who had appeared as his sidekick Pancho. And unlike any other filmed programs of the day, it would be shot entirely in color.
Fred Ziv wrote the pilot show and the series was immediately bought by Cisco’s first radio sponsor, Interstate Bakeries, for ten years in 16 television markets. Then NBC bought it for its owned and operated television stations in New York, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco for $1.0 Million in a five year deal. Eventually 156 episodes were produced and when other early series looked dated in black and white, the colorful Cisco Kid appeared fresh in reruns for decades.
Boston Blackie starring Kent Taylor followed the next year with 58 episodes and Ziv Television Productions was off and running.
But radio was still Ziv’s cash cow in 1949 and with the postwar boom in AM stations - 710 new stations since 1945 - the company continued its practice of quality programming and major stars.
Ziv rolled out his first sitcom, the half-hour Bright Star with movie stars Irene Dunne, Fred MacMurray and Harry Von Zell. In three years the show generated $500,000 in revenues. An episode is posted below.
Ziv also ventured into talk shows in 1949 with Adolphe Menjou and his wife Verree Teasdale in Meet The Menjous, which eventually resulted in 520 quarter-hour episodes.
Business was booming in 1950 and the company added 60 new salesmen - well-trained and armed to the hilt with research and success stories - whose specialty was helping client radio and television stations sell Ziv shows to sponsors.
Ziv’s penchant for big names resulted in his getting two of the biggest in December, 1950. Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, signed to star in the half-hour adventure series Bold Venture. When it went on the air four months later, 423 stations had bought the show resulting in an estimated $1.3 Million in gross sales in its first year of syndication. For details and audio examples, see Bogart & Bacall’s Bold Venture on this site.
More big names were added to the Ziv radio portfolio in 1951 when the company bought seven-year rights to the 52 half-hours formerly broadcast as The Skippy Hollywood Theater for $36,855 and re-packaged the series as Movietown Radio Theater. When Ziv's marketing department went to work, Movietown Radio Theater was the focus of a national Name The Stars contest offering prizes from major manufacturers. The effectiveness was evident in 1954 when Movietown Radio Theater's gross revenues were $205,000 - a single year’s gain of 556% over its original cost for seven years!
Anti-Communist feelings ran high in 1951. Ziv responded by paying $10,000 for the radio rights to Matt Cvetic’s I Was A Communist For The FBI - originally a Saturday Evening Post serial and then a 1951 Warner Brothers film. With movie star Dana Andrews in its lead and a production budget of $12,500 per episode, the series was pre-sold in 389 markets before its premiere in 1952. The first program in the series is also posted below.
The success of I Was A Communist For The FBI led Ziv to sign movie star Tyrone Power to star in a 52 episode patriotic series about a young U.S. Senator, Freedom U.S.A. The series was pre-sold in 500 markets before it aired.
Ziv's annual radio production budget was $2.0 Million as declining ratings and revenues signaled the end of Network Radio’s Golden Age in 1953. Ironically, it was a record high year for Ziv’s radio and television revenues, a whopping 50% over 1952.
While Network Radio divisions had shrunk, the Ziv payroll had grown to 1,500 employees with regional offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Cleveland and Cincinnati. The company also maintained district sales offices in Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Harrisburg, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Memphis, Minneapolis-St Paul, Peoria, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Tulsa and Youngstown. Clients knew that marketing help from a Ziv representative familiar with their area was always nearby and available.
Ziv’s 33rd and final radio series of the Golden Age was The Hour of Stars - a 60 minute combination of four 15-minute segments - Music Time With Dick Powell, Peggy Lee Picks The Tunes, Tony Martin‘s Song Parade and The Ginger Rogers Show. Each of the stars was contracted to record 260 quarter hours, enough for 52 weeks of weekday strips and they were paid handsomely for their effort - Lee received $23,000, Powell and Rogers each got $30,000 and Martin took home $57,000. Like Freedom U.S.A., The Hour of Stars was pre-sold in 500 markets.
Television was increasingly becoming the major thrust of Ziv marketing in 1953. The company had six filmed series on the air including The Cisco Kid, Boston Blackie, The Living Book, Story Theater plus two new highly popular shows, Favorite Story, a TV version of Ziv’s successful radio series with host Adolphe Menjou, and I Led Three Lives starring Richard Carlson, an undercover agent drama similar to radio’s I Was A Communist For The FBI.
I Led Three Lives was Ziv’s most popular new television release to that time with first month sales in 94 markets. It was hailed as, "The largest commercial television network ever built," headed by NBC's WNBT(TV)/New York City. A year later the list had nearly doubled to 178 markets. Its leading sponsors were Phillips Petroleum in 25 Midwest markets and Coors Beer on ten Rocky Mountain stations.
Ziv had become the largest independent television producer using leased facilities at the historic California, (fka Famous Players), Studios in Hollywood. That changed in December, 1954, when the company purchased the six-acre American National Studios, (fka Grand National Studios and Eagle Lion Studios), on Santa Monica Boulevard for a reported $2.0 Million.
The new studios gave Ziv expanded space to turn out another two dozen series over the next six years. Among them were the wildly popular Sea Hunt starring Lloyd Bridges and Highway Patrol with tough talking Academy Award winner Broderick Crawford. Both fit Ziv’s stated formula for television success: “Action, movement, adventure, mystery and law enforcement.”
“Most of my shows were about the chase”, he later told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “We had the chase on horseback, the chase on the highway, the chase underwater and the chase in the air. The chase provides a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of tension. But it all begins with the paper - a good script.”
Departing from his normal procedures, Ziv produced seven series for network television during this period: West Point, Harbor Master and Men Into Space, (CBS), Tombstone Territory and Rough Riders, (ABC), and Bat Masterson and The Man And The Challenge, (NBC). For syndication purposes, Ziv released television versions of more familiar names from Network Radio; Mr. District Attorney, Meet Corliss Archer, Dr. Christian and The Man Called X .
In the case of Mr. District Attorney, Ziv took a page from his Cisco Kid and Boston Blackie playbook by simultaneously producing a radio and television version of the longtime Network Radio favorite with David Bryan in the title role. Both series enjoyed sales success, justifying the $200,000 paid to Phillips H. Lord for the radio and television rights to the character he created in 1939.
Although Ziv’s primary production focus had turned to television, the company’s radio penetration was never greater. Billboard’s 1954 survey indicated that Ziv programs accounted for more than 15 hours of total airtime a week in 325 cities. As examples of major market acceptance, radio stations in Cleveland broadcast 16 hours of Ziv programs a week, New Orleans stations broadcast 23 hours, Boston stations aired 26 and Dallas-Fort Worth stations programmed 33 hours.
Instead of shying away from radio, Ziv pursued two famed comedians in 1954 to revive their fading radio careers - Red Skelton and Eddie Cantor. The 260 half hours of The Red Skelton Show were re-edited material recorded from past network broadcasts with wrap around narrations provided by Skelton. Ziv’s Eddie Cantor Radio Show was an original production of 258 half hours starring the comedian with announcer Jimmy Wallington plus singers Roy Edwards and Patti Lewis. Sales of both series were brisk.
Skelton was still active in television with a weekly show on CBS-TV. But Cantor’s heart attack in 1952 had limited his work in live television and that gave Ziv an idea. The two signed a contract in 1954 for 39 episodes of what Billboard hailed as, “…the most lavish single syndication venture in the history of the business…” The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater was intended to be a filmed half hour similar to the 63 year old comedian’s appearances on NBC-TV’s Colgate Comedy Hour. Although the show was sold in 101 markets it fell short of critical expectations and resulted in what Cantor biographer Herbert Goldman called, “Cantor’s most excruciating professional failure.”
Two more “paste-up” shows completed Ziv’s radio catalog. In 1955, the company obtained syndication rights to the popular Breakfast With Dorothy & Dick from WOR/New York. Columnist Dorothy Killgallen and her husband Richard Kollmar, (Ziv’s radio Boston Blackie), had conducted the popular chat show since 1945 and Ziv transcribed their live broadcasts for distribution to other markets. The last project for Fredric W. Ziv Company Radio Productions was The Fred Waring Show - 156 half-hour compilations of the popular Pennsylvanians’ orchestra and choral recordings with additional voice tracks recorded by Waring.
Ziv’s gross revenues for 1959 reached $25.0 Million. Ziv was only 54 years old but he and his longtime associates John Sinn and Bud Rifkin, decided it was time to sell the company. As he explained to Dr. Morleen Rouse, “The reason I sold my business is because I recognized that the (television) networks were taking command of everything and were permitting the independent producers no room at all. I didn’t care to become an employee of the networks.”
Several financial dealings were involved before United Artists bought Ziv Productions for $21.75 Million in 1960. Fred Ziv’s one-man office in Cincinnati had grown to 1,800 employees in the company’s 21 offices in the United States with international sales offices iToronto, London, Paris, Mexico City and Tokyo.
Not one for retiring, Ziv joined the faculty of the Division of Broadcasting in the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati where he taught broadcasting history and production techniques for the next 22 years. He could also have taught his students a thing or two about selling.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cincinnati in 1985 and died in 2001 at the age of 96.
Little was written about him during his career and even less since his passing. Yet, although he never owned a station or controlled a network, Fred Ziv was truly one of the giants of broadcasting during and beyond Network Radio’s Golden Age.
* Much of the Ziv historic information in this report appears in Dr. Morleen Getz Rouse’s 1976 University of Michigan PHD dissertation, The History of F.W. Ziv Radio & Television Syndication Companies, 1930-1960. Our thanks to Mike Martini at Cincinnati's Media Heritage for making this work available for our study.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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