'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house, ABC was swinging an axe—watch out.

Day Break, Show Me the Money and Help Me, Help You fell victim to the holiday slaying. All are off the schedule effective immediately; all but Help Me are off the air permanently.

ABC had reasons for its Scrooge act, and, per usual, the reasons were about ratings.

Day Break, the highly touted serial drama starring Taye Diggs as a Los Angeles cop forced to live one bad day over and over again, averaged 6.5 million viewers through five telecasts, compared to the 17.8 million the "fading" Lost averaged for ABC in the same Wednesday time slot.

Show Me the Money, the game show which never seemed to excite viewers as much as host William Shatner, pulled in 7.2 million through four episodes, and proved a particularly lousy draw among young adults. (By comparison, the Monday edition of NBC's Deal or No Deal is a Top 20 show among 18-to-49-year-olds, and averages 16.1 million fans overall.)

Help Me, Help You, the Ted Danson therapy-group comedy, has been very quietly struggling on Tuesday nights. It averaged 8.4 million, but fell to 3.5 million viewers last week, for a lowly 91st place finish in the latest Nielsen rankings.

All of the shows kicked to the recycling-tree curb by ABC had especially lousy weeks last week. Day Break attracted just 3.9 million viewers (87th place); Show Me the Money, an uninspiring 6.3 million (63rd place).

Day Break is being replaced this week by reruns of According to Jim and George Lopez, two veteran sitcoms that weren't supposed to be pressed into service until the new year. George Lopez will also spell Show Me the Money, which had actually been renewed before the Shat hit the fan. ABC's other under-performing new comedy, the wedding-themed Big Day (76th place, 4.8 million), will sub for Help Me, Help You on Tuesday night.

Day Break and Show Me the Money are goners, with Day Break's remaining completed episodes to be relegated to ABC's Website.

Help Me joins fellow ABC freshmen The Nine and Six Degrees in limbo—the shows may return, or maybe they won't. The only new ABC shows with relatively sunny futures are Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters, both of which have been renewed for the full season.

The failure of Day Break is a big one for the network, which was hoping to keep Lost fresh by only running new episodes in two big spurts, and filling in the dead spots with a show that would keep viewers locked into the time slot.

Instead, the 9 p.m. Wednesday hour has been taken over in a big way by CBS' Criminal Minds (fifth place, 16.06 million), and ABC has conceded it in a big way to Fox's American Idol, which returns in January. As previously announced, Lost will move to 10 p.m., Wednesday in the winter, with a pair of new comedies slated to go up against Idol and Criminal Minds at 9 p.m.

Other ratings doings:

• Survivor: Cook Island's racial-profiling gimmick long since played out for CBS, a franchise-low 16.4 million (third place) tuned in for a season finale. Winner Yul Kwon gets a million bucks anyway.
• Erik Chopin lost 52.58 percent of his body weight and gained $250,000 for outdieting the competition in the season closer of NBC's Biggest Loser 3 (18th place, 11.7 million).
• An ABC broadcast of The Santa Clause 2 (14th place, 13.7 million) was first among holiday specials, followed by an ABC presentation of the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas (20th place, 11 million), and trailed considerably by an NBC presentation of the all-new, non-animated The Year Without a Santa Claus (51st place, 7.4 million).
• Barbara Walters' The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006 ABC special didn't even average 1 million viewers per each supposedly fascinating person (8.8 million, 34th place).
• The miracle of Chrismukkah translated into season highs for Fox's The O.C. (84th place, 4.3 million).
• If the CW ever has to choose between airing the Family Television Awards (118th place, 1.7 million) or Friday Night Smackdown (81st place, 4.5 million), it might not be a close call.  
• In cable, a TBS offering of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (4.3 million) was the top yuletide draw; a TLC midnight offering of Crazy Christmas Lights (382,000) wasn't.
• Time magazine was nice enough to name you Person the Year, yet only 552,000 of your friends were nice enough to catch the premiere of the CNN special in your honor.
• TBS' My Boys (1.4 million) has been picked up for nine more episodes; the sitcom's eagerly anticipated "initial-order finale" is set to air Dec. 28.

Led by NCIS (first place, 17.4 million), one of the few top shows not in reruns, CBS dominated its rivals, emerging as the most watched network (12.3 million) and the top-rated network among 18-to-49-year-olds.

NBC (9.1 million) managed a pair of second-place finishes, followed by Fox (7.4 million). The pink-slip-issuing ABC stewed (7.2 million) in fourth.

The CW (2.5 million) kept its distance.

Here's a look at the 10 most watched prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:

1. NCIS, CBS, 17.4 million viewers
2. Deal or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 16.7 million viewers
3. Survivor: Cook Islands (Sunday), CBS, 16.4 million viewers
4. House, Fox, 16.1 million viewers
5. Criminal Minds, CBS, 16.06 million viewers
6. CSI: Miami, CBS, 16 million viewers
7. CSI: NY, CBS, 15.8 million viewers
8. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 15.7 million viewers
9. Sunday Night Football, NBC, 15.3 million viewers
10. CSI, CBS, 15.1 million viewers