Nancy predicts the end of The Simpsons. Your boy Dan makes a different prediction.
Nancy
The first time I ever saw The Simpsons was on a VHS rental of what I believe was The Abyss. Being around nine years old, this likely wasn’t my choice of movie rental. But for whatever reason I do remember seeing a short The Simpsons cartoon.
The short was from The Tracey Ullman show and featured Bart, Lisa, and Homer at a Sea World type of aquarium. Bart, being the scamp that he is, goes for a naked swim in one of the shark tanks.
Soon after, the show debuted on television and soon became a key building block in my sense of humour and perspective on the world.
It has been a part of my life now for around 37 years with new seasons of the show debuting without fail for that entire time. Outside of daytime soaps and news programs, there are no television shows which have hummed along in the background of our culture for this long.
Like many fans, I have long been curious about the end date for the show. And today we saw the first real sign that the show may be nearing its end.
Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, has publicly predicted an end date for the show. In an appearance on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, she said she expects the show will end with season 40.
To be clear, this isn’t a confirmation that the show will end (presumably it is still profitable). But this is her making an informed prediction.
Season 37 of the show still has some episodes to air, with season 38 expected to air later this year. Next year will see the release of the second The Simpsons movie ahead of the season 39 debut.
40 is obviously a nice, round number to end on. Fox has the show renewed up until season 40. And it would be nice to see the show end while most of the key creatives responsible are still alive.
But, I don’t think the show is ending.
D23 is this coming Friday. It’ll be the first under new CEO Josh D’Amaro and I think he’ll want to be pushing a narrative that Disney under his reign will push the company in new directions.
My prediction: Along with a preview of The Simpsons 2 to debut in 2027, there’ll be some news on the future of the show as a Hulu exclusive. It may end with 40 seasons on Fox, but it’ll live on in some form at Hulu. Maybe not as a weekly ongoing, but maybe in more of a streaming-friendly format.
All eyes are on Friday’s D23…
News Desk
Somehow Wellington Paranormal is coming back for a fourth season. There has been a four year gap since season three. I didn’t know this show had much more to say beyond its first episode, but here we are. Read: Chortle
Ben Jones, the actor turned Georgia congressman who played Cooter Davenport on The Dukes of Hazzard, has died at 84 after a heart attack. Read: The New York Times
Jon Cypher, who played Chief Fletcher Daniels on Hill Street Blues and a general on Major Dad after originating the Prince in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1957 Cinderella opposite Julie Andrews, has died at 94. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Caitríona Balfe will star in and executive produce Ascension, a psychological horror series ordered by Apple TV from Alfonso Cuarón, about a documentary filmmaker who infiltrates a sinister 20th-century cult. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
The BBC has joined Working Title’s Jane Eyre adaptation starring Aimee Lou Wood and penned by Succession writer Miriam Battye. Read: Deadline
California has awarded tax credits to the Clueless sequel series — with Alicia Silverstone reprising Cher Horowitz ($16M) — and a reboot of The Rockford Files starring David Boreanaz ($21M), among nine TV projects in the latest round. Read: Variety
Netflix has closed its 2026 upfront, nearly doubling ad commitments, with sponsorships for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup sold out and almost all in-game inventory gone. Read: TheWrap
NBC will air a three-episode Law & Order: SVU marathon on 10 September showcasing Mariska Hargitay‘s Emmy-nominated performances, ahead of her hosting the 78th Emmy Awards. Gotta fill that schedule with something… Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Apple will bring live Friday Night Baseball to its immersive format on Vision Pro from 28 August, letting subscribers watch MLB games from stadiums including Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium with spatial audio and floating stats. How this wasn’t a feature sooner is baffling. This is how you sell your hardware… Read: UploadVR
Speedrunner Lekukie has reportedly claimed a new Super Mario Bros. world record. Read: Polygon
How I use AI to compile ABW each morning
It is important in the current moment, I feel, to be transparent about how AI is being used in publishing. Mostly I want ABW readers to know which slop they’re reading in ABW is human made and which is written by the robot overlords.
My process for building the ABW newsletter each morning hasn’t changed much in the too-many years I have been publishing it. Each morning I trawl through an RSS reader and identify interesting news stories to add in. I usually open them in a new tab and then once I have been through the last 24 hours of content (or three days on Monday because I don’t publish news on the weekend), I’ll then consolidate the stories into a list of stories that are actually interesting for an ABW audience.
Most of these stories then get used for the News Desk and Trailer Park sections of the newsletter. I’ll identify 2-3 stories that I want to go a bit deeper on and those will be the stories that lead the newsletter.
Everything in that top section is 100% bona fide Dan Barrett human slop.
For the news Desk, I’m using a lot more AI for my first draft. I’ve built a Claude skill which lets me paste in the URLS I want in the News Desk section. It spits it out as a 1-2 sentence story, then I go in and do an edit. Here I’ll cut out any dull information Claude things it is important, add commentary and context, mix in some snide comments and/or lame jokes, and then move on.
In the coming weeks I want to automate this process a little bit more and get Claude to talk directly to my RSS feed and pull the interesting stories directly into its system so that I can start curating there. That’s going to take some effort and time to get it working properly, I’d expect.
Every few months I might try generating an image for whatever reason, but outside of YouTube thumbnails, I don’t really like the output that I’ve gotten from AI imagery.
Recently Substack has introduced a measure to identify which posts are being generated using AI tools. Whenever I run the test ahead of publication, it tells me that ABW is 100% AI free. And that, frankly, isn’t true.
But, I did want to share how this newsletter gets made and to be upfront about how AI is used to knock it together.
Trailer Park
Jon Hamm stars in American Hostage on MGM+ Sept 20.
Based on the acclaimed first season of the scripted podcast of the same name, AMERICAN HOSTAGE is a psychological thriller set in the 1970s that tells the harrowing true story of Fred Heckman, a beloved Indianapolis radio reporter who is thrust into the middle of a life-or-death crisis when hostage-taker Tony Kiritsis demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program.
NFL Hometown Eats debuts on Roku Channel August 24.
Super fans Eva Longoria, Joel McHale and Rebel Wilson are joined by football legends DeMarcus Ware, Devon Witherspoon and Davante Adams as they explore the best gameday eats in their home cities.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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