The Simpsons

&nbsp The Simpsons is an American animated television sitcom created by Matt Groening and produced by the Fox Broadcasting Company. The main characters are a satire of a working-class family, consisting of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The series lampoons many aspects of American culture, society, politics and history.

The cartoon made its debut as 60-second animated bumpers for The Tracey Ullman Show, with the first short airing on April 19, 1987. The shorts were then expanded into a full-length 30 minute television spin-off by 20th Century Fox, first airing on December 17, 1989. As of now (January 20, 2021), 32 seasons of the series have been produced.

The series currently holds the record for the longest-running primetime sitcom in the history of television, running for 31 years since 1989, and becoming the longest-running program on FOX.

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 Publicatio Rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a Dysfunctional Famil He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name, adapting an anagram of the word "brat".[3] EnlargeThe Simpsons Family. The Simpsons Family first appeared as Shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. 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.

In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasing Company.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 The Simpsons Roasting on a Christmas", a Christmas special."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.[11] 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.