To say that the 20th and final season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians,

which airs on Thursday, signals the end of an era is not only a cliche, it is plain
inaccurate. Keeping Up With The Kardashians created an entire world
anchored in social media – and in many ways, this era is only just taking off.

The show – based in Los Angeles in the United States – premiered in 2007,
just a few months after the debut of the iPhone. Low-rent reality shows were
already de rigueur on cable channels, but even the most successful ones – The
Osbournes, The Simple Life, Laguna Beach, The Hills – barely caused a ripple
beyond a small pop culture bubble.

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Some reality stars got commercial licensing deals; some got magazine covers.
And while network reality shows could become megahits across demographics
– The Apprentice starring Donald Trump regularly scored more than 10
million viewers per episode – reality shows on cable television were relatively
inexpensive to produce and easy to market test in real time. No audience? No
problem: cancel it.
Tel
evision personality Kris Jenner attends the WSJ Magazine 2019 Innovator Awards at the
Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, in New York City, the United States
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

That is why many reality shows developed for cable television became blink-
and-you-miss-it casualties (example: House of Carters, about former
Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter and his family, which ran for a total of
eight episodes on E!).

So what made the Kardashians stand out while other families fizzled out?

Some say the answer lies in the marketing genius of “momager” Kris Jenner,
whose net worth stands at an estimated $190m, according to Forbes, and who
takes a 10 percent cut of her children’s modelling, licensing and beauty deals –
as well as $100,000 per episode for their show.

“There’s a lot of people that have great ideas and dreams and whatnot, but
unless you’re willing to work really, really hard, and work for what you want,
it’s never going to happen,” Jenner told The New York Times newspaper in
2015. “And that’s what’s so great about the girls. It’s all about their work
ethic.”

And that, experts say, is where the Kardashians stood out from the rest of their
reality show counterparts.

The Kardashians knew what they wanted – fame – and they developed their
own road map to get it.