ER (TV series)
Following the broadcast of its two-hour pilot movie on September 19, 1994, "ER" premiered Thursday, September 22 at 10:00. It remained in the same Thursday time slot for its entire run. "ER" is NBC's third longest-running drama, after "Law & Order" and "", and, the longest-running American primetime medical drama of all time. On April 2, 2008, NBC announced that the series would return for its fifteenth season. The fifteenth season was originally scheduled to run for 19 episodes before retiring with a two-hour series finale to be broadcast on March 12, 2009, but NBC announced in January 2009 that it would extend the show by an additional three episodes to a full 22-episode order as part of a deal to launch a new series by John Wells titled "Police", later retitled "Southland". "ER"s final episode aired on April 2, 2009; the two-hour episode was preceded by a one-hour retrospective special. The series finale charged $425,000 per 30-second ad spot, more than three times the season's rate of $135,000. From season 4 to season 6 ER cost a record-breaking 13 million dollars per episode. TNT also paid a record price of $1 million an episode for four years of repeats of the series during that time. The cost of the first three seasons was 2 million per episode and seasons 7 to 9 cost 8 million dollars per episode.
ER (TV series)
A typical episode centered on the ER, with most scenes set in the hospital or surrounding streets. In addition, most seasons included at least one storyline located completely outside of the ER, often outside of Chicago. Over the span of the series, stories took place in the Democratic Republic of The Congo, France, Iraq and Sudan. One early storyline involved a road trip taken by Dr. Ross and Dr. Greene to California and a season eight episode included a storyline in Hawaii featuring Dr. Greene and Dr. Corday. Beginning in season nine, storylines started to include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, featuring Dr. Kovac, Dr. Carter, and Dr. Pratt. "We turned some attention on the Congo and on Darfur when nobody else was. We had a bigger audience than a nightly newscast will ever see, making 25 to 30 million people aware of what was going on in Africa," "ER" producer, John Wells said. "The show is not about telling people to eat their vegetables, but if we can do that in an entertaining context, then there's nothing better." The series also focused on sociopolitical issues such as HIV and AIDS, organ transplants, mental illness, racism, human trafficking, euthanasia, poverty and gay rights. The Africa episodes of "ER" were discussed in a scholarly article by Julie Cupples and Kevin Glynn published in the "Annals of the Association of American Geographers" in 2013. Other episodes used more creative formats, such as the 1997 live episode, "Ambush" performed twice; once for the east coast broadcast and again three hours later for the west coast, and 2002's "Hindsight" which ran in reverse time as it followed one character, Dr. Luka Kovac, through the tragic events of one Christmas Eve shift and the Christmas party that preceded it.