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(EMAILWIRE.COM, December 10, 2008 ) America - Springfield is home to everyone’s favourite yellow family – The Simpsons. TheMoveChannel.com takes a look at their fictional city and tries to solve the Simpson mystery - which American town is Springfield really based on?
Creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, chose the name Springfield for the Simpson’s town as it is one of the most common place names in America. He wanted it to be an ‘everyman’ town, with which viewers could identify without getting too bogged down in the geography.
It's as if all of America was compressed into a single town, or a single state. Springfield is everywhere and nowhere.
The uncertain location of Springfield has been a running joke throughout the series. There are 34 US states that have at least one community with that name and whenever the location arises in an episode, maps are obscured and conversation are interrupted at the crucial moment.
There has been much speculation on the location of the state. Though the state in which Springfield appears is never actually made clear, numerous episodes discuss other states, thereby implying that Springfield is not located in them.
Nevertheless, diehard fans have tried to determine the town's location by taking the town's characteristics, surrounding geography and nearby landmarks as clues.
In one episode Lisa Simpson says that the location is a mystery and instructs the viewer to follow the clues to figure it out. In response, the show has become intentionally evasive in regard to Springfield's location.
Other clues which have been included in episodes range from Homer watching a football game where the kickoff on Sundays is 1pm Eastern Standard Time, which suggests Springfield is in a time zone further west, most likely Pacific Time.
Springfield is also far enough north to get snow (and for the residents to have plenty of snow-related equipment), but south enough that six inches of snow will close the schools.
In last year’s ‘The Simpsons Movie’ the idea that Springfield cannot really exist is further emphasized when Ned Flanders identifies the four bordering states as Ohio, Nevada, Maine and Kentucky, most of which are vastly separated from each other, while Kentucky and Ohio border each other with no state in between.
To promote the movie, the newspaper USA Today asked its readers to vote for their favourite real-life Springfield. Competing communities across the U.S. named Springfield competed to win a special ‘Hometown Premiere’ of the film.
Each participating Springfield will have approximately 30 days to submit a short film, between three and five minutes long, showcasing the community’s ‘Simpson Spirit.’
The town of Springfield, Vermont won the competition and hosted the movie's premiere.
When the competition was run last year, Homer Simpson said, “This is great! It will give me a chance to finally find out where Springfield is!”
For more information on American properties and the market in general, please visit http://usa.themovechannel.com/
-ENDS-
Notes to editors:
TheMoveChannel.com is a property website that was founded in 1999 as an online resource for buying, selling and learning about property. It now receives as many as 300,000 visits per month and advertises over 50,000 properties in nearly 90 countries, which are listed by over 500 partner organisations.
For further information as well as images and interview possibilities, please contact:
Dan Johnson
Managing Director
www.themovechannel.com
0207 952 7650
TheMoveChannel.com
Jon Moore
020 7952 7658
j.moore@themovechannel.com 
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