Show, network both get the ax

"Grounded for Life" has been canceled. Again.

The WB told the show's producers that the 13 episodes they ordered for this season will be the last. The show, which sometimes airs on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. (when it isn't being pre-empted for something else) has averaged a paltry 2.68 million viewers this season, which is pretty dreadful.

It is, however, more viewers than have been tuning in to the show that precedes it, "What I Like About You." Which isn't canceled. Yet.

"Grounded," the loud sitcom about a loud family (headed by Donal Logue and Megyn Price) was canceled once before. Fox, which debuted the show in January 2001, gave up on it in September of 2001 after airing 39 episodes. (Although, oddly enough, Fox aired a 40th episode in December of that year.)

The folks at the WB were more than happy to take the show off Fox's hands and "Grounded" began a new life on a new network in February 2003. But the ratings, never real good, have gotten real bad.

The show wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good, either. The fact that it produced 91 episodes is amazing.

Don't hold your breath waiting for yet another network to give "Grounded for Life" a home.

Logue won't disappear from TV altogether, however. He'll still make the occasional appearance on "ER"as the father of Dr. Susan Lewis' (Sherry Stringfield) child and her sometimes-husband.

CANCELED NETWORK: Meanwhile, in another corner of the vast Time-Warner media empire, an entire network has been canceled.

CNN announced that it's shutting down CNNfn, its financial news network. After nine seasons of struggling to compete with CNBC, CNNfn is still only available in about 30 million homes and has never made a profit.

Gee, it isn't often that CNBC beats anybody.

TERROR MINISERIES: Without providing much of any details, NBC announced that it will produce and air a miniseries based on the 9/11 Commission Report.

Ummmmm . . . that sounds like a really, really iffy idea. But the fact that it will be written and executive produced by Graham Yost, who performed the same duties for "Band of Brothers" and "Boomtown," makes it seem somewhat less iffy. But still iffy.

"The fact that the 9/11 report is a bestseller is indicative of not only its importance but also the way in which the story of the events is laid out in a clean narrative fashion," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly said in a prepared statement. "And that is what we expect to do with this miniseries."ç

I'm sure that the decision to go in this direction has nothing to do with the fact that NBC didn't have to pay anything for the rights to this particular bestseller.

YOU GOTTA LOVE IT: The gang on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" has titled its election-night special "Prelude to a Recount."

It airs Tuesday at 8 p.m.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com