Last week, RTL5 stopped broadcasting their Deep Space Nine re-runs. RTL5 was broadcasting the episodes from the first part of season three. Unfortunately, the abrupt ending of the DS9 re-runs has nothing to do with the holidays. The simpel reason is that RTL5 did not purchase any more Deep Space Nine episodes. So last week RTL5 broadcasted the last of the episodes they purchased.
On October 8th 2001, RTL5 started broadcasting Deep Space Nine starting with season one every working day. Last Friday, the 54th episode (which is the 8th episode from season three) was broadcasted. Why RTL5 purchased the first 54 episodes instead of all the episodes of the first three seasons is unknown. As the Vulcans would say: That would be the most logical thing to do.
At this point the future plans of RTL5 concerning Star Trek are unknown.