Today in History: The Simpsons debuts as a cartoon short
America's longest-running animated series debuted 31 years ago as a cartoon short on the comedy sketch show, The Tracey Ullman Show.
The world’s favourite animated comedic yellow family, The Simpsons, was originally conceptualised by Matt Groening as a cartoon short for the then brand new comedy sketch production, The Tracey Ullman Show.
Producer of The Tracey Ullman Show, James Brooks, had decided he wanted to incorporate cartoon shorts into the show before and after commercial breaks.
Having seen Matt Groening’s cartoon series, Life in Hell, Brooks asked Groening to come up with a cartoon idea for The Tracey Ullman Show.
According to Groening, he hurriedly put The Simpsons together while waiting in the lobby of Brooks’ office for the pitch meeting.
The initial drawings of the characters were rather crude, as Groening was under the impression the animation team would clean them up a little.
Then a fledgling network, Fox decided to go with Klasky Csupo as the animation company for the cartoons, as they offered to do the job at a lower cost.
The team of animators adapted Groening’s scripts for animation in one week, merely re-tracing his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes.
Groening named the Simpsons after members of his own family, modelling Bart on himself, with ‘Bart’ being an anagram of ‘brat’.
Colourist Gyorgyi Peluce was the person who decided to make the characters yellow.
The first short, titled Good Night, aired during Episode 3 of the first season of The Tracey Ullman Show on 19 April 1987.
The shorts would air over the course of first three seasons of the show, before Brooks decided to turn them into their own 30-minute long prime time show.
The half-hour series premiered on 17 December, 1989, with Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.
It has since become the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated programme, and in 2009 it surpassed Gunsmoke as the longest-running American prime time, scripted television series.
The show is now in its 29th season (with a 30th set to be produced) and as of 15 April, has seen 634 episodes aired.
It was also adapted into a feature-length film title The Simpsons Movie which premiered in 2007 and grossed over US$527 071 022 at the worldwide box office.
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