When The Simpsons premiered on Fox in 1989, Ronald Reagan had recently left office, Michael Jordan had yet to make the NBA Finals, and Nintendo was still on its first-generation console. Nearly 40 years later, it’s now earned its own 24/7 livestream.
This week, Disney+ announced that the first 35 seasons of the series will have its own livestream channel on the platform for premium subscribers. All 767 episodes from the first 35 seasons will be shown in chronological order. That’s nearly 300 hours of content, meaning it will take roughly two weeks of continuous viewing to complete a rewatch. (And spot all the times the show appeared to make eerily accurate predictions about the future.)
“From day one, the fans have asked for a stream of The Simpsons, and we’re happy to oblige,” Gabe Lewis, SVP of programming and content curation at Disney+, said in a press release. “Streams on Disney+ have been a fantastic go-to experience for subscribers looking to sit back and relax with their favorite shows and movies, and we look forward to evolving the user experience and expanding the offering with more streams, to more subscribers, later this year.”
Always-on streams have risen in popularity as of late, with multiple platforms offering “channels” devoted to specific shows. Amazon Prime runs a non-stop Buffy the Vampire Slayer stream; Peacock churns Dateline and Saturday Night Live in perpetuity.
Disney+ indicated The Simpsons channel would be “refreshed” periodically. That could mean inserting other Simpsons content, including a number of shorts, the 2007 full-length Simpsons Movie, or the super-sized episodes that were produced exclusively for Disney+.
One episode that likely won’t make it: “Stark Raving Dad,” the 1991 third season premiere in which the late Michael Jackson had a guest-starring role. Given the child molestation allegations that subsequently surfaced against Jackson, Simpsons creator Matt Groening and producers James L. Brooks and Al Jean preferred that it be kept out of circulation. It’s not currently available on Disney+; it was pulled in 2019 when the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland and its coverage of alleged Jackson victims began airing.
The stream also won’t include episodes from the currently-airing 36th season, but fans can still locate them: They’re available on Hulu.