What is the title of South Park's first broadcast episode?

South Park’s first broadcast episode is titled “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe.” It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 13, 1997, and served as the series premiere.

The episode introduces the central group of boys—Eric Cartman, Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, and Kenny McCormick—as they wait for the school bus and become involved in an alien-abduction story. Kyle’s younger brother, Ike, is abducted, giving Kyle the main rescue mission while Cartman struggles to understand what happened to him.

The episode grew from the crude animated shorts The Spirit of Christmas, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in 1992 and 1995. Unlike later South Park episodes, the original pilot was made largely with paper cutouts and stop-motion techniques. After Comedy Central ordered the series, subsequent episodes shifted to computer animation designed to preserve that cut-paper appearance.

The listed alternatives are all genuine South Park episodes, but they came later: “Volcano” was episode two, “Weight Gain 4000” was episode three, and “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride” appeared later in the first season.