If you watched last night’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, then you know the show pivoted away from the storyline about Kim being robbed at gunpoint in Paris, and launched a new arc about Kim’s desire to have another kid.
Yes, we’ve been hearing about Kim’s uterus for weeks now, and if last night’s installment of KUWTK is any indication, there’s a lot more fertility talk to come.
It’s enough to make some fans wonder if Kim’s desire to expand her family is legit, or if she’s simply doing what she can to boost the show’s slumping ratings.
Rumors about Keeping Up With the Kardashians being canceled certainly aren’t new.
In fact, they seem to surface about once a month.
But this time, the numbers support the speculation like never before.
E! execs are said to be troubled by the show’s sharp decline in the critical 18-49 demographic, and there are serious doubts as to whether or not the Kard clan will even be given the courtesy of a farewell season.
It would be a humiliating defeat for a family that prizes its public reputation above all else.
So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Kim might be
“Kim’s new baby storyline was developed by Kim, Kris and show producers very recently as a way to save the show,”
If you thought the end of Kim’s PTSD storyline felt abrupt, you’re not alone.
And now it seems we know exactly why the show was so quick to abandon an approach that formerly felt rich with dramatic potential.
It seems fan interest simply didn’t meet producers’ expectations.
The apathy from potential viewers (as indicated by the show’s continued ratings dip) likely has something to do with the fact that the Paris robbery received a ton of press coverage when it happened back in October.
Six months is a millennium in tabloid news cycle time, and fans of the family likely felt they knew everything there was to know about the crime.
So Kris called an audible – and she put the responsibility of pulling it off squarely on Kim’s shoulders:
The pregnancy storyline was reportedly shoehorned into last night’s episode at the last minute, and Kim was well compensated for the unexpected increase in workload:
“Kris offered Kim and Kanye several million dollars a week if they can get the ratings up,” says the production insider.
“She knows that Kim is the last hope of saving them from cancellation.”
Sadly, short of debuting a new sex tape on the air, at this point, there’s probably not much Kim can do to renew interest in her decade-old reality show.
