“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” originally aired on December 17, 1989. Not long after, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a Bart Simpson t-shirt. To celebrate the show’s copper anniversary (I’m told copper is the 22nd anniversary), here are some of the Simpsons quizzes we’ve run over the years.
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IIRC, this would then also be the day Sam Kinison appeared on Married…With Children, and these shows would mark the first time anything on Fox cracked the Nielsen top 20.
posted by Wayne Stevens on 12-17-2011 at 3:39 pm
I think you’re right. I was searching for a good quote from that week to include here (“These vulgar cartoons have no business in primetime!”) and came up empty, but several contemporary reports mentioned the Kinison/Married With Children ratings bonanza.
posted by Jason English on 12-17-2011 at 6:05 pm
Came back here because I remember this may not have been the premiere of the show. This was billed as “The Simpsons Christmas Special.” I think the weekly series began in January of 1990, but there was a few weeks in between.
With the Simpsons having been shorts on the Tracy Ullman show, and there were shorts in the movie theatres that summer to promote the upcoming series, there really wouldn’t have been any quote like you wanted to be found.
At that time, the good Reverend Wildmon and others were more focused on ranting about Married…With Children, especially with Sam Kinison there to add fuel to that fire.
Full-blown Simpsons-mania and the backlash that would go with it didn’t happen more until the Spring of 1990.
posted by Wayne Stevens on 12-17-2011 at 8:55 pm
freddie and mae started to go big the same time
posted by jack on 12-20-2011 at 4:04 pm