Television has touched all of our lives. It has changed the world. Yet most of us either abuse it or tend to take it for granted. The mission of the MZTV Museum

is to contribute to one’s understanding of the impact of television through the museum’s collection and interpretation of television sets and related ephemera. What makes this museum unique is that it exists in several dimensions. Physically it is in the ChumCityTV complex in the heart of Toronto, but it is also an e-museum on the web and has been made available to different audiences through an exhibition called Historic Television and Memorabilia from the MZTV museum.

A brainchild of Moses Znaimer, President and Executive Producer of Toronto’s innovation independent television station, Citytv, the museum stemmed from his personal need to collect televisions and preserve their histories. His first piece was a Philco Predicta, which he found to be a beautiful and commanding piece of sculpture. Znaimer wonders why, considering television’s ubiquity, there has been a neglect of the older television models. He notes that, "there are fewer pre-war TV’s left in the world than Stradivarius violins".

With over a billion televisions on the planet it is surprising that the study of their history and design has been almost completely neglected. Several of the museum’s pieces, such as the 1939 world’s Fair Phantom Teleceive, and pre-war models like the Baird Televisor and Alexanderson’s Octagon are extremely rare.

This museum seeks to redress the situation by charting the history of over 60 of the 250 sets in the collection, from their inception in the 1920’s to the advent of solid-state electronics in the 70’s. The hope is to invoke nostalgia from visitors. Depending on their ages, people will remember different images. With the Oral History Project, the MZTV Museum seeks to develop a collective history of television by recording visitor’s habits and memories. In that way everyone can contribute to television’s history.