WhereIsAtlas · Television

What Happened to Zenith?

Zenith invented the wireless remote, helped write the digital HDTV standard, and was the last American television maker. LG bought it in stages and it now sells no televisions at all.

Zenith began in Chicago in 1918 as an amateur radio business and became one of the two largest television makers in the United States, inventing the practical wireless remote and contributing to the digital HDTV standard. LG Electronics, then GoldStar, bought a 5 per cent stake in 1990, took control in 1995 and acquired the rest through a prepackaged Chapter 11 plan effective on 9 November 1999, in which existing shareholders received nothing. Zenith survives as LG's United States research subsidiary in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and licenses Pro:Idiom, the encryption used to deliver television signals in hotels. It does not make televisions.

The company that taught America to use a remote

Zenith's reputation comes from a run of inventions that most people now take for granted. The company built a portable radio in 1924, the first mass-produced AC radio in 1926 and push-button tuning in 1927. It made the first practical wireless television remote, the Space Command of 1956, using ultrasonic tones struck from aluminium rods inside the handset — the mechanism that gave remotes their nickname, "clickers", because viewers could hear them. Zenith said the device raised television sales by 40 per cent, licensed it to RCA and others, and twice successfully sued Admiral for copying it [1].

It also invented subscription television. Phonevision put a descrambler box on top of the television and ran it to the telephone line: when a film was about to start, the viewer called a Zenith operator, who sent a signal down the wire to unscramble the picture. It was the first working pay-television system, and it was tested in Chicago [1].

And it helped define how television is broadcast now. Zenith was one of the first companies to build a digital high-definition television system, and its work with the Grand Alliance from 1993 contributed parts of what became the ATSC standard for American digital broadcasting — the standard the country switched to in 2009 [1][4].

From Chicago manufacturer to the last one standing

For a period in the middle of the century Zenith was a large industrial employer as well as a famous brand. In 1960 it and RCA were the two biggest television manufacturers in the United States, each with more than 20 per cent of the market while 25 other companies divided the rest. By 1962 it employed 11,000 people, at least 6,460 of them in seven Chicago plants, plus the Rauland subsidiary that made picture tubes and Central Electronics, which built amateur radio equipment [1].

The decades that followed were a long defence against imported televisions. Zenith joined National Union Electric, Sears and Motorola in antitrust and antidumping litigation against Japanese manufacturers, seeking $900 million in damages; the case ended in the defendants' favour, with summary judgment in 1981, a Supreme Court ruling against Zenith's antitrust claims in March 1986 and the refusal of an appeal on the antidumping claims in 1987 [1].

By 1988 Zenith was the last American television manufacturer, and the company had concluded that its consumer business could not be saved. The decision it made instead is the pivot of the whole story: rather than sell the television business, it sold the part of the company that was making money. Zenith Data Systems, the computer business it had built around Heath Company after buying it from Schlumberger for $64.5 million in 1979, went to Groupe Bull in October 1989 for $635 million, with the proceeds intended for HDTV research and debt reduction [1].

LG buys in, in three steps

Zenith's remaining television business needed a partner, and by 1990 it also needed protection from a hostile takeover. The solution was to sell 5 per cent of the company to the Korean manufacturer GoldStar — now LG Electronics — as part of a technology-sharing agreement [1].

In July 1995 LG raised its stake to 55 per cent, which was enough to take controlling interest. The New York Times covered it under the headline "Last U.S. TV Maker Will Sell Control to Koreans". Zenith's analogue television line was ageing and American HDTV was still years away, so the company was small and cheap relative to a global consumer-electronics market it could no longer compete in [1].

The final step was a bankruptcy. Zenith filed for Chapter 11 in 1999 with a prepackaged plan that had the support of most of its creditors. The bankruptcy court confirmed the plan that October and it took effect on 9 November 1999. Under it, LG exchanged about $200 million of its claims for 100 per cent of the newly issued equity of the reorganised Zenith; bondholders received new 8.19 per cent senior debentures maturing in 2009; and all outstanding common stock — including the shares LG had itself paid for — was cancelled, with no distribution to any stockholder. An equity committee had challenged the fairness of the transaction on the basis that it was a going-private deal in which the majority shareholder would end up owning everything; the court found the restructuring appropriate under federal and Delaware law [1][5].

What happened to the televisions

Zenith-branded televisions did not stop immediately. LG produced some Zenith-branded plasma, LCD and direct-view sets for selected retailers, and Zenith's name appeared on the DTT-900 and DTT-901 ATSC converter boxes that LG built for the American switch to digital broadcasting. The profitable Network Systems division, which made set-top boxes for cable and satellite operators, was sold to Motorola in the summer of 2000. Other products were made as OEM goods under names such as Admiral, and the Allegro label that began life as a Zenith audio brand was used on others [1].

Then the name stopped appearing on new televisions, and the company moved on to something less visible. Zenith's own account of itself is now that of a technology development and licensing company: a wholly owned subsidiary of LG Electronics since 1999, and LG's United States research subsidiary for consumer electronics, hospitality and health care technologies and broadcasting standards. Its main commercial product is Pro:Idiom, an encryption technology Zenith created that is widely used in the hospitality industry to deliver digital television signals. Licensing is administered by Zenith, and qualified companies can enter an agreement that includes a royalty-free licence to use the technology [2][3].

The headquarters is part of the story's ending too. Zenith occupied its building in Glenview, Illinois from 1976 to 1999; the building was demolished in 2018 to make room for a neighbouring retailer's expansion, and the consolidated headquarters had already moved to Lincolnshire, Illinois [1].

Why the Zenith brand is a licensing story without a licence

Zenith belongs in this registry with Blaupunkt and Polaroid, but it is a different case from either. Blaupunkt and Polaroid are names rented out to manufacturers after the original businesses failed. Zenith still exists as a company, under the same parent that bought it, doing genuine research and holding genuine patents — it simply stopped being a brand of television sets, and LG sells televisions under its own name instead [2][4].

That makes Zenith the cleanest example of a particular kind of American corporate ending. The company was never liquidated and never disappeared. Its manufacturing was gradually outsourced to competition it could not beat on price, its one profitable division was sold to raise money for a technology bet, and the remaining business was absorbed by a foreign partner that had been buying in since 1990. Shareholders in the 1999 reorganisation were the only people who lost anything outright [1][5].

What survives is technical. Every American digital television broadcast uses a standard Zenith helped build, and a hotel television that shows a scrambled-then-unscrambled channel is very likely using a technology the company invented and still licenses. The Zenith name on the front of a set, though, has been gone for years.

Entries in this story

Sources

  1. Zenith Electronics — Wikipedia (2026-09-20) ↩
  2. Enabling Technology and Licensing Expertise — Zenith Electronics LLC (2026-09-20) ↩
  3. Heritage — Zenith Electronics LLC (2026-09-20) ↩
  4. Why Did Zenith TVs Disappear? Here's What Happened To The Iconic American Brand — SlashGear (2026-09-20) ↩
  5. Zenith Plan Approved — Kirkland & Ellis, from Bankruptcy Court Decisions Weekly News and Comment (2026-09-20) ↩