Here’s a short feature story on the year The Simpsons began—1989—and what that moment meant for television and culture. D’oh! The Year America Met Its First Family
That act of desperation became a series of 48-second bumpers on The Tracey Ullman Show starting in 1987. They were crude, sloppy, and brilliant. Viewers wrote letters. Fox, a fourth-place network launched just three years earlier and often mocked as the “coat-hanger network,” needed a hit. Brooks pushed for a full half-hour series. Network executives were terrified. Animated shows were for Saturday mornings, not prime time. The last adult cartoon to try— The Flintstones in the 1960s—was a fossil. year the simpsons started
We did. And we’re still hungry.