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's first sale in Europe was Mr. District Attorney, bought by Radio Diffusion Francaise, with Ziv International of France overseeing dubbing of episodes into French.
[2] Needing more space to accommodate increasing production, in December 1954 Ziv purchased 92 percent of American National Studios in Hollywood.
[5] Today, most of the rights to Ziv's TV shows are distributed by MGM Television and SFM Entertainment, 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.