‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ Couldn’t Keep Up

LOS ANGELES — After 14 years and 20 seasons, the Kardashians are leaving the small screen. The family has decided to air their last season of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” on E! in 2021, leaving many wondering what’s next?

“Kardashians” star and business mogul Kim Kardashian West took to Instagram on Sept. 8 announcing the family’s departure from cable TV.

Since the airing of the first episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” in October 2007, the Kardashian-Jenner family has been a staple of popular culture. While fans were shocked to learn the show is ending, there is a possibility the Kardashians are actually not going anywhere. Instead, there’s a greater possibility that fans could see the family now more than ever.

“I think they (the Kardashians) really are meeting fans where they are, which right now, is online. They’re on TikTok, they’re on Twitter, they’re on YouTube, they are on all these different platforms that you don’t really need to wait week by week to sit and watch an episode of the Kardashians,” Alexandra Canal, a producer and entertainment correspondent at Yahoo Finance, told Annenberg Media.

With each Kardashian-Jenner sister managing over 100 million followers on Instagram alone, the family may be more aptly considered influencers than reality TV stars, Canal adds. This influencer status plays into a bigger theme of the demise of cable TV.

The Kardashian’s target demographic for their reality show is no longer tuning into cable TV, and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” has seen declining viewership over the years. At the height of the show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” garnered 4.8 million views with the season four finale in February 2010, according to the LA Times. Comparatively, the latest episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” garnered 810,000 views.

Canal points out that many of the show’s turning points often pop up on social media first.

“A lot of the things we are seeing play out on social media are actually big plot points of the show but it’s almost like with cable television, you’re late to the game. Everything already happened on social media, you already watched it, you already saw it,” Canal said.

“I feel like they’ve shown so much of their lives already, so much of their family, so much of these inner moments, you know, there’s not much left….to give the public more information or more entertainment, and I feel like they know that,” Bianca Betancourt, an assistant news editor for Harper’s Bazaar, told Annenberg Media.

While the Kardashians have not yet announced what their next move will be following the show’s series finale in 2021, speculation regarding a move to either a streaming service or an absolute forgo of television has begun.

The Pew Research Center found that 61% of young adults, those between 18 to 29, use a streaming service as their primary way to watch television.

Regarding that statistic, and declining cable TV views, it is no wonder people are speculating a Kardashian appearance on Peacock, NBCUniversial’s own streaming service, or another platform.

“If you’re the Kardashians, you realize your audience is watching less and less TV every day,” Rich Greenfield, an analyst of Lightshed Partners, told the LA Times.

But, while “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” is garnering lower viewership, Canal and Betancourt add that does not equate to lower interest in the Kardashians.

“I think people are still interested in what they (the Kardashians) are doing but I just don’t think they (fans) need to watch the show to know what they’re doing,” Canal said.

Betancourt added that the interest in the Kardashians is still there, just on other platforms, “I mean look at their Instagrams alone, how many followers they have, how much engagement they have, how many likes they’ll get. It’s because they know how to create content for their fan base, and for what the world wants to see.”

Yet, still some Kardashian superfans took to Twitter to say they felt “gutted” by the news of the show ending. But, according to Variety, when the family renewed the show in 2017, the renewal was worth around $150 million. With that in mind, and with all of the Kardashian-Jenner sisters’ individual businesses booming, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” can no longer keep up monetarily.

With less than 1% of Kylie Jenner’s $900 million net worth coming from the show, the ending of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” does not seem to be as shocking.

“When the announcement came and you really think about it, I do think this is an appropriate time for the show to end when you talk about this family,” Canal said. “If you think about the income that they make from the show, relative to all their other businesses outside the realm of the show, it’s really pretty miniscule.”

While the end of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” is an end to an era of reality television, it is not the end of the Kardashians brand. Betancourt adds that what each Kardashian-Jenner chooses to do in the future post “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” is based upon their individual personalities.

For Kendall that means continuing to model, Kylie continuing Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Skin, and Kim solidifying her place within the fashion industry with her shapewear line, SKIMS.

Whether the family’s next venture includes streaming, or a focus on their individual businesses, the miniscule monetary value of the show and low viewership seems to have signaled the end of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” as we know it.

“It will be interesting to see who they are without the show, but again, I don’t think the show really defined them, especially in recent years,” Canal said. “So, I don’t really think this is going to change their life all that much and I don’t really think it’s going to change our perception of them.”