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Sure, we aren’t too far removed from it, but the finale to ER still sticks with me two years later. It isn’t so much the finale itself - literally, what happened and how things got wrapped up. That end of it, actually, I’ve parted with.

What’s stayed with me, then, is the idea that one once great drama had died that night, and, with it possibly, the 10 p.m. drama.

NBC, creator of Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere and later Law & Order and The West Wing, believed it. Months after ER’s finale, it did away with scripted programming between 10 and 11 p.m. to give Jay Leno five hours a week to mess around. The move was blasted by just about everyone and their mom. Yet, I think, as cable TV continues snagging valuable 18- to 49-year-old eyeballs, the downright ballsy call seems increasingly prophetic. (Or, a sign that a little experimentation must happen).

What got the gears turning on the topic was a featured article this week in the New York Times, which analyzed network TV’s losing battle at 10 p.m. to cable jauggernauts like Jersey Shore and Pawn Stars. While sizeable audiences still tune in to CBS, ABC and the like at 10, they generally are not the kinds of people advertisers really want. That is, they aren’t young.

For instance, it’s common knowledge CBS skews old, but stats quoted in the article were just baffling. Talking median age here, CBS’s youngest 10 p.m. show is Hawaii Five-0, where anybody who has celebrated less than 50 birthdays is about as prized as Aaron’s golden calf to the Israelites. The network’s worst? New drama Blue Bloods, which averages an audience about as old as its mustachioed star, Tom Selleck. (He’s AARP eligible).

I don’t think the business has to be this way. If quality programming were there, audiences would hopefully flock to it. (Just don’t ask Arrested Development).

From an outsider’s standpoint, I honestly can’t say what makes Criminal Minds different from CSI: Miami (or any of the CSIs). Or, why CBS (and NBC) think it hip to whittle down the names to their dramas to cutesy acronyms like NCIS: LA and LOLA. How am I, a 20-something, supposed to take any of this seriously when it sounds like broadcast TV is trying to sell me a car?

What I’m getting at here is that nobody my age talks about network drama (save for The Good Wife). Even Grey’s is yesterday’s news. All anybody has an opinion about anymore is the ridiculousness of Jersey Shore or one of the seven iterations of The Real Housewives of…, a franchise spinning off sequels faster than Lionsgate’s Saw. It sickens me that that’s what the cool kids are into anymore - generalizing, I know - but such is the state of the industry.

I refuse to think the network drama dead, but I do think it troubled. Network comedy was in about the same position when stalwarts like Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, then Will & Grace and even Everybody Loves Raymond ended. But, the art of the rebound happened not because of rehashes and spinoffs like Joey succeeding (they didn’t), but because the networks got distinctive.

NBC’s Thursday night comedy slate looks nothing like it did 10 years ago, and that’s a great thing. If it did, I swear NBC would have given up on comedy altogether. Slower paced comedies paired with pesky laugh tracks don’t cut it anymore, and NBC and ABC get that notion. CBS, I’m sure, will soon follow once America’s love affair with Charlie Sheen’s personal life completes itself (wishful thinking) and seniors - generalizing, again - find shows styled like The Office or Modern Family hilarious.

Instead of spawning Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior from Criminal Minds or Law & Order: Crossing Guards Division from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and dubbing it progress, network execs need to dig deep into the inner recesses of their creative little brains and come away with programming that’s fresh - and, here’s a thought, have absolutely nothing to do with doctors, law enforcement or lawyers.

I don’t watch as many dramas as I once did, but of the ones I do - Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy - none of them call broadcast home. And, as I just challenged, they aren’t police or courtroom procedurals.

I don’t consider my tastes unique here, so when I say that I skip dramas premiering on broadcast because I assume them to be bad, I imagine there are others my age (or any age) doing the same thing. I’ve heard great, great stuff about The Good Wife, but have neglected to turn it on because I’m skeptical. The same is true, in a way, of Friday Night Lights (though I’m more aware at what a grave mistake I’ve probably made in not watching an episode before its series finale aired). Were The Good Wife or FNL a product of AMC, I probably would have started watching them by now. But I haven’t, because my bias is that broadcast dramas don’t have edge.

Anyway, the 10 p.m. drama isn’t dead, but it’s arguably broken and needs fixin’. Let’s stop cloning, rehashing and re-imagining, and instead do different.