How Much Are The Busbys Paid For 'Outdaughtered'?
Raising six kids is expensive.
TLC Everyone knows raising children costs money. Starting from the cost of a crib and car seat and all the way up to college, children need a million different things that have serious price tags attached to them. For most couples, simply affording the costs of just one or two children is all they can manage.
That's what Danielle and Adam Busby were expecting to do as well — but then they got the surprise of their lives in 2014 when they learned they were expecting quintuplets. They already had one daughter so that meant going from a family of three to a family of eight in the blink of an eye.
Like other large families such as the Duggars of 19 Kids And Counting or the Gosselins of Jon and Kate Plus 8, the Busbys took a reality TV contract to help pay the bills. But what does filming for TLC really pay?
How much are the Busbys paid for Outdaughtered?
TLC never shares contract details.
The salaries of top stars in TLC's reality roster is always a subject of curiosity. The network, however, keeps contract details very private so no one can ever be sure what kind of money is being exchanged. A producer familiar with how reality shows structure their budgets says that as a general rule, a family like the Busbys would make 10 percent of the show’s budget. He estimates TLC budgets about $250,000 to $400,000 per episode. So, that's $25,000-$40,000 per episode and they film as many as 13 episodes per season. That could add up to as much as $520,000 for a season of filming. That would help pay for a lot of diapers.
How doe that compare to other reality shows?
Half a million dollars isn't anything to sneeze at but even that is modest compared to some top level reality contracts. According to reports, Bravo pays Real Housewives stars handsomely to keep bringing the drama to the small screen. Nene Leakes may have had as much as a $2.5 million dollar contract for season 10 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. The Kardashian family got $150 million for Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2017. Even the stars of Jersey Shore were making millions: Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi reported made $2.5 million in the final season of the show.
Do the Busbys have other jobs?
According to LinkedIn, Adam Busby used to work as an account manager at a business development firm in Houston. Now he owns his own media consulting company. Danielle was a project manager overseeing safety training for BP but she left that job when she got pregnant with the quints. Neither of them list salary information for their past positions.
The Busby family in 2020.
Were their old jobs enough to support their big family?
In a 2015 blog post, Danielle addressed her concerns about money. She was pregnant with the quints at the time and was thinking about how they were going to support the bigger family. "Both Adam and I were doing great at our jobs, providing for our family of three and began to live a lifestyle of 'what we want, we get,'" she wrote. "Though we had some ups and downs through our years with finances, especially when infertility started when trying to have Blayke, we got back ‘on our track’ and got to do the things we wanted to do."
She explained that after having Blayke, she had changed jobs and was making twice as much money as before. Then she found out she was pregnant with five girls at one time and realized that they were going to have to make some changes. "Like I mentioned before, when we found out we were having quints….we immediately think…how are we going to afford this?." she said. "I, of course, instantly think ‘of course I will not be working anymore’…but was that ‘really’ want I was going to do??? Was I really going to give up this job where I was making so much money to really be a stay-at-home mom?"
But that's exactly what she did, leaving work when the strain on her body began to be too much during the pregnancy. That was before the TLC contract but she remained optimistic, saying "And so it began … what we thought we could never do (being on one income) … we are doing. I no longer have a full-time income coming in, but we are doing it! We are preparing for our family of soon to be eight on ONE INCOME!"
They have been media figures since 2016.
TLC came knocking not long after the quints were born and the family has been doing the show since 2016, which provides a generous income for them. They also have a line of clothing they sell on their family website, along with Danielle's Rodan and Fields skincare shop. Unline some reality stars, they don't do brand partnerships, instead focusing on their own businesses.
Outdaughtered airs on TLC on Tuesdays.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.