Thanks 🙏 definitely gonna do something when I get to Nashville in January

In 2007, Kim Kardashian was working the register at her family's clothing store. Today Forbes says she's worth $1.9 billion, and the reality show that made her famous barely moves that number. The show almost never happened, either. TV producers passed on it because they figured the family had no real talent. Ryan Seacrest had a tape of them hanging out at a Sunday backyard barbecue, and when the producers said no, he went over their heads to Ted Harbert, who ran the Comcast division that owned E!. Harbert took the tape home, watched it that night, and said yes. The two youngest girls in that first season were 10 and 11 years old. And yes, the TV checks got huge. Later E! renewals were reported anywhere from $80 million to $150 million, Hulu reportedly paid around $100 million for the first two seasons of the reboot, and Kris reportedly took her 10% as manager. Honestly though, that's pocket change next to what they did with the attention. Think about how a normal company finds customers. It raises money and buys ads, one Instagram click at a time, and plenty of them go broke doing it. The Kardashians had a cable network paying them to be on TV every single week for 14 years, and they took all those eyeballs and pointed them at companies they owned. Kylie, the 10-year-old from season one, launched her lip kits in 2015 at 18. Four years later Coty paid $600 million for 51% of her company. It had done $177 million in sales the year before, so Coty valued a lipstick brand at about 7 times revenue. What Coty really paid up for was her 270 million social followers, and she built that following on E!. Kim's SKIMS raised money last November at a $5 billion valuation, with Goldman Sachs leading the round, and it's on pace for around $1 billion a year in sales. Her piece of that one shapewear company is worth more than every TV deal her family ever signed put together. Basically, E! spent 14 years paying the Kardashians to run their marketing department, and the family owned the companies on the other end of it.

Before Beverly Hills, 90210 became a cultural phenomenon, it was struggling to stay on the air. Jason Priestley reveals the moment he realized the show had finally become a hit. 🎙️ Full episode of Throwbacks out now!

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