History Of The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated television series, created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Since its creation, The Simpsons have become a part of 454 episodes, 20 seasons and a movie that released in 2007. Their series has won several dozen awards. It has been named as the 20^th century’s best television series by the TIME magazine. It is indeed the longest running American sitcom and animated program. In 2009, it surpassed ‘Gunsmoke’ to be termed as the longest running American primetime entertainment series. Read on further to know more interesting and amazing information on the history, origin and background of The Simpsons.

 

 

On being asked by James L. Brooks to come up with the idea of a series for animated shorts, Matt Groening ended up creating The Simpsons. The characters of The Simpson family were named after Groening’s family members, with the exception of his name, which was substituted as “Bart”. The other members of the family were named Homer, Abraham, Marge, Lisa and Maggie. The Simpson family first debuted on television in ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ on April 19, 1987. The animators for the first season were Wesley Archer, David Silverman and Bill Kopp, of which only Archer and Silverman continued. The colorist was Georgie Peluse, who decided to give the characters yellow color.

 

The Simpson series was adapted into a half-hour series during its first season. The first half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, titled as ‘Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire’. The series turned out to be Fox Network’s first TV series to rank among the season’s top 30 highest-rated shows. The show was controversial from the very beginning, as the main character in it, which is Bart, was never punished for his misbehavior. This led to the recognition of Bart as a poor role model for children. Although, The Simpsons merchandise and T-shirts were banned from the market, they generated US $2 billion during the first 14 months of sales.

 

The second season began with the release of ‘Bart Gets an F’, which was followed by ‘Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish’. The time duration of the show had three versions: 1 minute 15 seconds long version, 45-second version and 25-second version. In the mid-1990s, the Fox networks switched its timeslot. This was done to compete with ‘The Cosby Show’ that was at number one at that time, while The Simpsons were in the top 10. Eventually, The Cosby Show beat The Simpsons and The Simpsons fell out of the top 10. However, the season three episode ‘Homer at the Bat’ saw The Simpsons beating The Cosby Show and get back in the ratings.

 

Since the time of its inception and till now, The Simpsons has given numerous episodes for the every season. In the 1990s, the main cast of The Simpsons threatened to strike, forcing 20^th century Fox to increase their salary and in all this, Groening well supported the actors. With the show’s continuous increase in revenue through syndication and DVD sales, the cast asked for a further hike in their salaries. Eventually, the production delayed and came up with 20 episodes instead of the planned 22. However, things were settled down and The Simpsons was back on track.

 

The Simpsons has won several awards till date, which include 25 Primetime Emmy Awards, 26 Annie Awards and a Peabody Award. The series has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well, which was set up on January 14, 2000. It was voted number one in the 100 Greatest Kids’ TV Shows by the viewers of UK television channel ‘Channel 4’, in the year 2001. Also, in 2005, they secured the top slot in the top 100 Greatest Cartoons. Entertainment Weekly placed the show at number one in the ‘Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years’ in 2008. On July 27, 2007, an animated ‘The Simpson’ movie was released, which was well appreciated by the audience.