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The Simpsons is an
American animated television sitcom created by
Matt Groening for the
Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a
satirical parody of a
middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its eponymous
family, which consists of
Homer,
Marge,
Bart,
Lisa, and
Maggie. The show is set in the fictional city of
Springfield, and lampoons
American culture,
society, television and many aspects of the
human condition.
The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a pitch for a series of
animated shorts with the producer
James L. Brooks. Groening created a
dysfunctional family and named the characters after members of his own family, substituting Bart for his own name. The shorts became a part of
The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After a three-season run, the sketch was developed into a half-hour
prime time show and was an early hit for Fox, becoming the first Fox series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).
Since its debut on December 17, 1989 the show has broadcast
446 episodes and the
twenty-first season began airing on September 27, 2009.
, a feature-length film, was released in theaters worldwide on July 26 and July 27, 2007, and grossed
US$527 million worldwide.
The Simpsons has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 25
Primetime Emmy Awards, 26
Annie Awards and a
Peabody Award.
Time magazine's December 31, 1999 issue named it the 20th century's best television series, and on January 14, 2000 the Simpson family was awarded a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Simpsons is the
longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and in
2009 it surpassed
Gunsmoke as the longest running American primetime entertainment series. Homer's exclamatory
catchphrase "
D'oh!" has been adopted into the English lexicon, while
The Simpsons has influenced many adult-oriented animated sitcoms.
Origins
Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of
James L. Brooks's office. Brooks had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his
Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating
Life in Hell would require the rescinding of
publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a
dysfunctional family.
He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name.
[
on Tracey Ullman.png|thumb|250px|left|The [[Simpson family] as they first appeared in
The Tracey Ullman Show]].
The
Simpson family first appeared as
shorts in
The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987.
[Richmond, p. 14] Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes.
One of the earliest jobs of the
Klasky Csupo company was creating animated sequences for the The Tracey Ullman Show which led to the start of The Simpsons.
The animation was produced domestically at
Klasky Csupo,
with
Wesley Archer,
David Silverman, and
Bill Kopp being animators for the first season.
Georgie Peluse was the colorist and the person who decided to make the characters yellow.
In 1989, a team of production companies adapted
The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the
Fox Broadcasting Company. The team included what is now the
Klasky Csupo animation house. Jim Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content.
Groening said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching.
The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989 with "
Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", a
Christmas special.
["Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" The Simpsons.com. Retrieved on February 5, 2007] "
Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems.
In 1992, Tracey Ullman filed a lawsuit against Fox, claiming that her show was the source of the series' success. The suit said she should receive a share of the profits of
The Simpsons—a claim rejected by the courts.
Production
Executive producers
List of show runners throughout the series' run:
