Santa's Little Helper reason he stopped performing as Santa's Little Helper was because "The producers thought... 'Hmmm, Dan barks pretty good, and we are already paying him and he seems to like doing the dog thing... why do we need to pay Welker who comes in here, spends less than an hour, eats all the doughnuts, refuses to come to rehearsals... let's just give the damn dog to Dan!'" Santa's Little Helper has become a well-known dog because of his appearances in the series. A writer for "The Grand Rapids Press" wrote in 2002 that "we all know who Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa
Media in The Simpsons no "Top Cat"!. Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear? Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney!" The character Kent Brockman functions as "The Simpsons"s main character for news parodies. He was based on Los Angeles anchormen Hal Fishman and Jerry Dunphy, and modeled after anchorman Ted Koppel. Another influence on the character was "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Ted Baxter, played by Ted Knight. His role on "The Simpsons" is to host the news as the fictional television channel, Channel 6's anchorman. In addition to the news, he also hosts the programs "Eye on Springfield" and "Smartline". In most of