Grey's Anatomy is still massively popular as it breaks ER's record for longest-running medical drama

Vulture

ER wrapped its 15-season run on April 2, 2009 with 331 episodes. Tonight Grey's Anatomy, also in its 15th season, will surpass ER with Episode 332. And Grey's is still going strong, thanks to Netflix helping it find a new audience. As Josef Adalian explains, "Grey’s currently ranks as ABC’s No. 1 series (comedy, drama, or reality) among adults under 50, the network’s demographic target. So far this season, the show is averaging a 3.1 in the demo, more than 20 percent ahead of the Alphabet’s No. 2 series (Modern Family and the much younger MD drama, The Good Doctor), both of which are currently averaging a 2.5 rating." Adalian adds: "Grey’s isn’t just a hit within the ABC universe. Its 3.1 demo rating puts it behind only NBC’s still-hot This Is Us (4.0 demo rating) among dramas airing on the six broadcast networks. (The only cable drama this season that outrates it is AMC’s The Walking Dead, though there’s a good chance that HBO’s Game of Thrones will catapult ahead of every show on TV once its final season arrives in April.) To put this in context, when ER was at the same point in its run as Grey’s, during the 2008–2009 television season, it enjoyed much less relative success: It ended its final year as the No. 12 drama on broadcast TV, and that was even with a big boost at the end from its series finale. (In ER’s penultimate season, it ranked behind 13 other dramas, including the low-rated and short-lived NBC reboot of Bionic Woman.) To be fair, ER was notching higher overall ratings in 2009 than Grey’s is delivering now, but that’s because nearly everything on TV drew a bigger audience a decade ago."

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