It seems like only yesterday that “Quarterlife” was going to be the long-awaited breakout Web television hit. It had MySpace behind it, with a healthy chunk of its millions of users as a built-in audience.

Flash forward: On the strength of its online performance, “Q-life” gets picked up by NBC, making an improbable comeback to the broadcast medium that originally rejected it.

And then, it tanks hard with only 3.1 million viewers, the worst network debut in 20 years, earning it cancellation and a demotion to Bravo.

What does this portend for the Web-development model for future mass-market media vehicles? The lack of even one solid success in this Web-TV crossover indicates that what works online is simply not transferable to the boob tube, despite content being content. It could be that movers and shakers on both sides are beating a dead horse in trying to find synergy this way.