Love them or hate them, the Kardashians changed business forever

In the final season of their show, the Kardashians remain modern-day marketing geniuses who changed how people watch, click and buy – and whose family milestones reflected broader cultural shifts

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 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. Some reality stars got commercial licencing deals, some got magazine covers. And while network reality shows could become mega-hits 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.