Fox Renews "The Simpsons" Through Season 22

I get a personal vibe of how long the Simpsons have been around in one incarnation or another.

The first Tracy Ullman short premiered on April 19, 1985. I was born a few hours later in the wee hours of April 20, 1985.

And since that means I'm starting to push a quarter of a century...
 
I can't say I'm surprised. This may sound crazy on a place like Toon Zone but I've only seen a few episodes of The Simpsons from Treehouse of Horror. I really liked what I saw but for some reason I haven't gotten around to watch any more episodes than those.
 
Wonder who (besides Fox's marketing monkeys) exactly is clamoring for a 22nd season of "The Simpsons"... 400+ episodes aren't enough? :-p

I stopped watching around 2000, so no reason for me to care either...

Re: "longest-running show in primetime": Far as American television's concerned, that'd be either:

- Consecutively, "60 Minutes" (on every Sunday night since 1968).

- Non-consecutively, either "The Hallmark Hall of Fame": on (in varying degrees) since 1951, or the various Disney anthology shows, on since 1954.

The Simpsons is also *not*:

- the longest-running American cartoon: that'd probably be "Looney Tunes" (1100 shorts made between 1930 and 1969).

- the longest-running television cartoon: that'd be some Japanese cartoon that's apparently been on the air since 1969.

- the longest-running television sitcom: a British show called "Last of the Summer Wine" holds that title (debuted in the mid-70s, apparently on every year since the mid-80s).

- the longest-running television program *period*: "Meet the Press" says "hi"----the Sunday morning political roundtable show's been on every week since 1947.

The Simpsons gets to hold the title of "longest-running American primetime scripted television program" ("scripted" to exclude the various variety shows and newsmagazines on longer than Bart and the gang, such as Ed Sullivan's show, etc.), as well as its won-from-the-Flintstones "longest-running American primetime animated program" title. Of course, I'd expect Fox to not use such a lengthy description and will probably launch into various "longest running show EVER!!!111"-type ads once they surpass Gunsmoke's record for sure... completely ignoring, of course, that quantity != quality (otherwise Saturday Night Live would be seen as the funniest thing on TV :-p ).


-B.
 
That's rather interesting, so the series is about as old as the network. No wonder Fox has such an attachment to the Simpsons.

As for the quality of the series, I don't mind it at this point. If you were to ask me the same thing during seasons 15-18, then I would've had a different answer (though nothing will ever match the greatness of its golden years from seasons 3-5). However, I can actually see them putting a conscious effort with the past couple of seasons, perhaps the feature film and transition to HD has gave the series its sixth wind. The show has already jumped the shark several dozen times, and now it is just mildly entertaining with a few good laughs here and there. It really isn't torture. I only find particular reality shows to be torture, which the Simpsons is not.

All I ask is for the series not to go beyond 25 seasons. That seems to be an appropriate milestone. Anything beyond that is soulless and excessive. And yes, the Simpsons premired in 1987 (Fox was celebrating the Simpsons 20th anniversary back in 2007).
 
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