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.
His parents were Jewish immigrants: his father William, a manufacturer of button holes for overalls, came to the US in 1884 from Kelm, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) and his mother Rose from Bessarabia three years later.
[1] Although he earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan[3] in Ann Arbor in 1928,[1] Ziv did not practice law, but instead opened an advertising agency.
Bat Masterson, fictionalizing the legendarily dapper marshal, gunfighter, and eventual sportswriter of his namesake, and Sea Hunt were also Ziv's first-run syndicated television productions.
Ziv Television Productions trademarks included odd for the times twists on the genres of his shows, twists such as a crime-fighting underwater explorer (Lloyd Bridges as Sea Hunt's protagonist Mike Nelson) and Highway Patrol, starred Broderick Crawford as Dan Mathews, maybe the first crime drama to show that large urban regions were not the only places where criminals liked to roam.
By 1959, the networks began taking control of what went on the air from sponsors, a major result of the quiz show scandals that exploded that same year, but Ziv was very unhappy about it.
Ziv lectured at the College of Mount St. Joseph[1] and served as "distinguished Professor of Radio-Television and Theater Crafts" at the University of Cincinnati,[3] which awarded him an honorary doctorate in performing arts in 1985.