THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

CW seeks bulimics, sex addicts, more

The CW is developing a reality series about New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer. The CW is developing a reality series about New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer. (Giovanni Rufino/Cw)
By Lisa de Moraes
The Washington Post / December 17, 2009

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A production company populated by CBS News producers is scouring the country, according to various reality-TV casting-call websites, for a chosen few chicks who are sex addicts, rage-aholics, exercise anorexics, bulimics or shopaholics, and willing to share the details in a new reality series for the CW network.

You can apply on the CW network’s website.

And, CW wants you to know, all applications and inquiries are confidential.

Applications to go on a reality series.

To reveal to America that you are a sex addict.

Strictly confidential.

Right.

“We know the pressures young women like you are under,’’ CW says on its website. “We want to explore how you cope and how you untangle the web of our double lives. Our hope is to get you to deal with your obsessions by confronting them and getting help.’’

CW further explains that participants will get free psychiatric advice, adding that “our production team has over 20 years of TV experience. We will treat your story, your family and friends with the utmost sensitivity and compassion, dignity and respect.’’

All this under the headline “Addicted . . . Obsessed . . . Confess.’’

But, this “sensitivity and compassion, dignity and respect’’ will not be afforded to just any sex addict or bulimic.

No, CW is looking specifically for sex addicts, bulimics, and anorexics who are “by day . . . beautiful, talented, and ambitious’’ and, naturally, “20-something,’’ and who, by night, “give in to temptation, to the dark side of yourself,’’ who “enjoy the duality and the excitement that accompanies your obsession, but you do know it’s a dangerous game.’’

In other words - only pretty party girls with eating disorders need apply.

The production team for this latest blot on the public weal includes executive producer Susan Zirinsky, who, since 1996, has executive-produced documentaries, entertainment specials, and other programming for CBS, including “48 Hours Mystery’’; and senior producer Paul Ryan, who is currently a senior producer at CBS’s “48 Hours.’’

“We don’t comment on development,’’ a CW spokesman said this week.

Meanwhile, whither go the Washington do-gooder celebutantes of CW’s much-ballyhooed “Blonde Charity Mafia’’ reality series?

Word is they may have been out-blonded by party-girl stewardesses of Virgin America Airlines and by “Gossip Girl’’ cameo star/New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer. Both are the subject of their own reality series in development at the network.

CW’s on-again/off-again D.C.-set “Blonde Charity Mafia’’ has disappeared from CW’s website. The network pulled a fan page that linked to the chicks’ Facebook page, according to Blonde Charity member Katherine Kennedy.

“They really haven’t told us much. They said [the series] was still on the books to be delivered, but no date - no specifics,’’ Kennedy said.

Even more ominous, Kennedy says she’s been told by the series’s producers and by CW that she is free to search for other TV project options.

Sources say the show’s fate hinges on the network’s reaction to two other reality series it ordered after it bought “Blonde Charity Mafia’’ when Lifetime decided to take a powder on the show back in late 2008. Those two series are “Fly Girls,’’ about flight attendants who work for “uber-hip’’ Virgin America, and the as-yet-unnamed Mortimer series.

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