Photo by Brendan Hoffman, courtesy The CW.

In a year when big-name reality television franchises from The Real World to The Real Housewives turned their lenses toward Washington, D.C., the show that got the ball rolling now looks like it may never see the light of day. Blonde Charity Mafia, previously slated to premiere this winter after having been pushed back from last summer’s programming schedule, has been unceremoniously removed from The CW’s web site, and its stars told that they are “free to search for other TV project options,” Lisa de Moraes reports today in the Washington Post. Sounds like a blow-off if we ever heard one.

The Reliable Source offers its own obit for the show, speculating that perhaps “the rest of the country isn’t very interested in the make-believe lives of our young society ladies?” For her part, Moraes notes that two other shows, Fly Girls (that’s the one about Virgin America flight attendants) and an untitled project starring New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer, may have simply eclipsed the network’s interest in the Mafia.

It remains to be seen is whether The CW might decide to at least burn off the six Blonde Charity Mafia episodes that are already in the can. It stands to reason that much of the material in the show may already be a tad dated, given that it was filmed well over a year ago, but a network will often to decide to at least try to get something out of a show it already owns by airing them in a late night or weekend time slot without really promoting it.