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The Simpsons began as 15-second cartoons
Shrinking to 15 seconds
Matt Groening was told to make a two-minute cartoon every week for The Tracey Ullman Show. He objected that nothing can happen in two minutes, and the producers called back to cut it to one minute, then to four 15-second cartoons. That left room only for quick sight gags.
The first sign that something was working came when Fox put some of those cartoons at the start of its movies, and audiences applauded when the titles came up.
Thirteen episodes, no pilot
When the series was ordered, Fox first wanted a single episode. Producer Jim Brooks refused and insisted on thirteen, with no pilot. Animation takes six months, so all thirteen were written before anyone saw what a finished episode looked like.
The whole run was built on those first thirteen episodes. They aired on a brand-new Fox network that was regional and didn't reach the entire country, and the show was extremely popular anyway.
How did Groening land the Ullman shorts?
Groening was drawing his comic strip Life in Hell when producer James L. Brooks invited him to pitch animated shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening has said he planned to pitch Life in Hell, realized he would give up ownership of it, and sketched a new family in the lobby instead. The Simpsons shorts premiered on April 19, 1987. They ran on the Ullman show for three seasons before the half-hour series began in December 1989.
Why does TV animation take six months?
A half-hour animated episode starts as a script and a storyboard, and each scene is then laid out, voiced, drawn, inked, colored, and edited, with revisions at several stages. In its early years The Simpsons had its frames drawn overseas, with studios in South Korea such as AKOM doing the animation. Corrections went back and forth between Los Angeles and the overseas studio.
Why did Fox move The Simpsons to Thursdays?
In the fall of 1990, Fox moved the show to Thursday at 8 PM, directly opposite NBC's The Cosby Show, then the most-watched program on American television. Promotions cast it as a showdown between Bart Simpson and the Huxtable family. The Cosby Show won the time slot that season, and The Simpsons later moved back to Sunday nights.
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