Year The Simpsons Started ((hot)) May 2026

Groening had been summoned by producer James L. Brooks, the genius behind The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Terms of Endearment . Brooks wanted Groening to pitch an animated short for The Tracey Ullman Show . Groening panicked—he didn’t want to lose the rights to his Life in Hell comic strip characters. So, in the lobby before the meeting, he scribbled a family named after his own parents and sisters: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.

We did. And we’re still hungry.

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 year the simpsons started

December 17, 1989

The Simpsons had arrived.

Thirty-seven years later (as of 2026), The Simpsons is the longest-running primetime scripted series in history. But in that first season—1989—it was just a strange, lumpy experiment. A cartoon with a drunk dad, a blue-haired mom, a sax-playing middle child, and a baby who never talked but somehow stole every scene. Groening had been summoned by producer James L

So raise a Duff Beer (root beer for the kids) and remember: It all started in a year when the Berlin Wall fell, the World Wide Web was born, and a ten-year-old in a red shirt told the world to eat his shorts. Groening panicked—he didn’t want to lose the rights