Harry Stephen Ackerman was an American TV producer, first at CBS as vice president in the 1950s, where he helped create, develop, oversaw, and/or approve the casting of Gunsmoke, I Love Lucy, The Jack Benny Show, Burns and Allen, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Our Miss Brooks, and many other shows.

Later, he was an executive producer at Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures. From 1958 through 1974, under the command of Ackerman as Vice President of Production, Screen Gems delivered the classic sitcoms: Father Knows Best, Bachelor Father, Leave It to Beaver, Dennis the Menace, The Donna Reed Show, Hazel, Gidget, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, The Monkees, and The Partridge Family. In the late 1940s, before coming to Hollywood, he was involved in the beginnings of the widely heralded Suspense and Studio One dramatic radio anthologies.