PASADENA, CALIF. — "The Nine" has not been canceled. It's just off the air and out of production, having completed its 13-episode order. And it may or may not ever be seen on ABC again.

"Six Degrees" is also off the air, but, after taking a break to "make a few creative changes," it is currently completing production on its 13-episode order, said ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson. But it, too, may never be on ABC again.

But it might.

"Those two actually may get back on the air in prime," he said. 'It would be this season, before May or in May."

Don't hold your breath.

Even if all 13 episodes of "The Nine" do air, don't expect an answer to the show's big mystery — that would have come if it had lasted 22 episodes.

ON THE OTHER HAND, "Day Break" — which was also yanked off the air before completing its 13-episode run — does have a definite ending. But, despite promises that all 13 episodes would be available online at abc.com, that hasn't happened yet.

McPherson urges patience. "There was a problem with the music rights. But they will be on at the latest (by the) end of February."

TV IS WEIRD, but few things recently have been weirder than when ABC ordered new episodes of the atrocious game show "Show Me the Money" one week and canceled it the next.

But McPherson insists it wasn't quite what it seemed. "What's kind of maddening about production is that you're paying money to do nothing, basically, because you're holding sets and holding all this stuff. Because of the way the timing went on that, we actually had to pick up the show to hold everything to go forward," pending the ratings. "We got to see a few more episodes, and we got to see performance of it, so we decided not to move forward."

Sounds perfectly logical. Unless you actually saw an episode of "Money," in which case you had to know it was going nowhere.