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In Argentina (and Latin America in general), The Simpsons get broadcast on TV dubbed in Spanish. When the credits on the TV show (after the Couch Gag), there's an added line by Homer's voice stating the episode's name (translated into Spanish, of course).

Intro in Latin Spanish (video)

Hoy veremos: Bart es un genio

(Today we'll see: Bart is a genius).

Now that I've started seeing the show in it's original English, I'm surprised to find that there's no speech during the TV credits scene in the original series.

So my question is - how did viewers learn the name of the episodes?

I guess today you may have digital TV with on-screen metadata showing the episode title - assuming you're watching via TV instead of on-demand streaming - but back in the 90's that was not an option.

I've noticed this watching The Simpsons, but maybe the question/answer is not Simpsons-specific?

PS: The Latin American version also has Bart's voice read the chalkboard gag in Spanish, so it's more a dubbing than adding info that wasn't there.

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  • 3
    TV Guide magazine, newspaper listings, etc.
    – BCdotWEB
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 7:00
  • 8
    They didn’t. Lots of shows didn’t tell you the episode names on broadcast TV. And generally people didn’t care to know the names.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 7:23
  • Somewhat related: movies.stackexchange.com/questions/109467/…
    – BCdotWEB
    Commented Aug 24, 2021 at 8:35
  • @ToddWilcox I guess your comment would be the correct answer to the question - do you want to post it as such?
    – mgarciaisaia
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 3:41
  • To add a bit of context, this is how it was shown in Spanish, right after all the original credits (so, several minutes into the episode): i.imgur.com/GwiIIyW.jpeg
    – dzz
    Commented Jan 18, 2023 at 10:18

1 Answer 1

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A lot of this has to do with culture. The name of an episode could spoil the plot. TV guides etc often gave episode titles, but in general, viewers were in these kinds of shows expected to not have a particular expectation.

For example: The title "Bart is a genius" gives away a huge amount of that episode, which some could say, would detract from the experience of it. So it was just not mentioned in the episode.

If someone though wanted to learn the name, there were always ways like newspapers, magazines etc. Or also DVDs and so on.

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