<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> External links </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Website </Td> </Tr> <P> ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist and medical doctor Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning over 15 seasons . It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Television, in association with Warner Bros. Television . ER follows the inner life of the emergency room (ER) of fictional County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and various critical issues faced by the room's physicians and staff . The show became the longest - running primetime medical drama in American television history . It won 23 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 1996 Outstanding Drama Series award, and received 124 Emmy nominations, which makes it the most nominated drama program in history . ER won 116 awards in total, including the Peabody Award, while the cast earned four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series . </P> <P> In 1974, author Michael Crichton wrote a screenplay based on his own experiences as a medical student in a busy hospital emergency room . The screenplay went nowhere and Crichton focused on other topics . In 1990, he published the novel Jurassic Park, and in 1993 began a collaboration with director Steven Spielberg on the film adaptation of the book . Crichton and Spielberg then turned to ER, but decided to film the story as a two - hour pilot for a television series rather than as a feature film . Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment provided John Wells as the show's executive producer . The script used to shoot the pilot was virtually unchanged from what Crichton had written in 1974 . The only substantive changes made by the producers in 1994 were that the Susan Lewis character became a woman and the Peter Benton character became an African - American, and the running time was shortened by about 20 minutes in order for the pilot to air in a two - hour block on network TV . Because of a lack of time and money necessary to build a set, the pilot episode of ER was filmed in the former Linda Vista Hospital in Los Angeles, an old facility that had ceased operating in 1990 . A set modeled after Los Angeles County General Hospital's emergency room was built soon afterward at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California, although the show makes extensive use of location shoots in Chicago, most notably the city's famous "L" train platforms . </P>

How long did the tv show er run