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NBC<\/p>\n
NBC’s “ER” lasted an incredible 15 seasons from its debut in 1994 to its finale in 2009, holding the title of the second longest running medical drama in history<\/a> behind ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”<\/a> But in its very first season, “ER” took a low-key, little-known product placement request that could’ve been a gag from “30 Rock.”<\/p>\n “[General Electric] was our corporate parent. The show had an imaging unit there in the [ER set],” Warren Littlefield, who served as NBC’s entertainment president from 1991 to 1999, told the Television Academy<\/a> in an oral history. “And Jack Welch, who was the then-chairman of GE, called up and goes, ‘The imaging unit is not a GE’ And I say, ‘We don’t own the show. We don’t produce. What do you want?'”<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, the chairman had a solution. “He goes, ‘We’ll replace it. Just tell us where it needs to be. We will send one.’ And they did. Within, like, two days, there was a GE machine installed on the set,” Littlefield continued. “And it was not a fake one. No one said we had to feature the logo or anything on the show. All [Jack] said was, ‘Our employees love the show, and it’s painful for them to know it’s not their equipment.'”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n A small request for one big show<\/p>\n
NBC<\/p>\n An imaging unit can refer to a number of different types of machinery that allows the professionals to see inside a body and make diagnoses. That includes systems that perform MRIs, CT scans, x-rays, and ultrasounds. We don’t know specifically which machine\u00a0featured on “ER”<\/a>\u00a0Warren Littlefield specifically referenced in the Television Academy oral history,\u00a0but it could’ve been one of several types.<\/p>\n
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