This is the Golden Age for shows with acronyms in their titles.
*Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
NCIS
CSI
*
Was the Man (and Girl) from U.N.C.L.E. the first?
How many others have their been? MASH* counts cause the asterisks are just fancy periods.
I will climb out of the screen to go after the first (and second) person to argue about initialisms.
J. A. G.
S. W. A. T.
How do you override the capital formatting rules again?
M.A.N.T.I.S, the short lived Fox superhero show.
NYPD Blue
Does Mayberry RFD count?
NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, etc etc. (or is that what you mean by “initialism”)
To be pedantic, there was a show called Inside USA in 1949, but getting past titles like that and GE Theater, there was Dr. I.Q. in 1954.
Looks like the first real acronym (initials that spell out a word) was, indeed, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Making an assumption on what counts from your examples, nope. Gomer Pyle, USMC beats it out by 4 years, and probably wasn’t the first either.
Owca.
Both Gomer Pyle and Man From U.N.C.L.E. debuted in 1964, but the latter started three days earlier.
Hmm…must have looked at the end date for UNCLE instead of the start. Oops.
ALF
Alien Life Form-His real name is Gordon Shumway
T.H.E. Cat, appeared a couple of years after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It was an anti-acronym: the letters were pronounced separately: T H E Cat.
In 1952, there was a quiz show called Q.E.D.
Is Law & Order: SVU still on?
This is a bit of a stretch, but in 1946, NBC News was called “The Esso Newsreel”. “Esso” is the pronunciation of the letters S.O., which of course come from Standard Oil.
I thought about that too, but it turns out that the actual name is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Same for Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
The first such show I can find on US prime-time TV is this one, aired on ABC Thursday nights in the 1957–58 season:
It was followed by M Squad Friday nights on NBC:
In the years before that, I find three shows with USA in their titles and one with MGM, but the two above use abbreviations taken from their heroes’ organizations.
Kind of out of left field, but the game show Twenty One was also on NBC Monday nights in 1957-58.
B.A.D.C.A.T.s… show that appeared in the wake of the original “Gone in 60 Seconds” about an elite car theft police division, in LA if I recall.
Burglary, Auto Division, Commercial Auto Theft, I think.
Two British series:
HMS Paradise
HMS Ark Royal
Maybe I’m missing something but how is this an acronym or abbreviation?