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History

In this page you can read about the history of our favorite family, "The Simpsons". 

- Origin

"The Simpsons" was created way back in that turbulent decade known as the eighties. The producers of Fox's "The Tracy Ullman Show" approached cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of the "Life In Hell" comic strip, about producing a short cartoon to be used as filler before and after commercial breaks. Matt accepted but struggled with the idea of what to do with the cartoons. He first thought about animating his "Life In Hell" characters, but quickly scrapped the idea when he realized that if the cartoon failed, his comic strip would be doomed as well. Eventually, he decided to create an entirely new set of characters based on his own family. His father was Homer, his mother Marge, and his two sisters, Lisa and Maggie. But rather than naming the brother after himself, he decided to call him Bart, an anagram for brat. And so, on April 19,1987, America was first introduced to "The Simpsons" in a two minute short called "Good Night" that basically gave the audience an introduction to the characters.

- The Tracy Ullman Years 

For two years "The Simpsons" gained it's popularity as more and more people tuned in to see what kind of trouble the family would get into this week. None of the shorts were more than about 2 minutes long, and there were about 40 of them produced in all. These cartoons weren't exactly grade A material, they were mostly slapstick jokes and one liners, but a few of them are very funny. The animation through most of these shorts is pretty bad, but I guess it was the best they could do back then. Towards the end of 1989, the people at Fox realized something, those Simpsons shorts had picked up enough of a fan-base that it could probably converted to a full length primetime series, and so it was. "The Simpsons" debuted in it's half hour format on December 17, 1989 with a Christmas special entitled "Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire".

- The Primetime Years

Fox ordered up thirteen episodes for the first season, and the ratings just seemed to get better and better. So the network ordered a 22-episode second season, and thus our favorite family as we know them today was born. The show has been through some rocky times, seasons 11 and 12 for instance, but it's strong fan-base has kept the show going, and it is currently in it's sixteenth season, with at least 2 more on the way. Ratings have been down lately, but Fox wouldn't be wise to terminate the show just yet. "The Simpsons" airs new episodes at 8:00 on Sunday nights, and if you want to catch up on older episodes, chances are your local Fox station shows repeats in syndication some time between 6:00 and 8:00 most weeknights. 

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