When Dandy Don Meredith and Howard Cosell used to bring Monday Night Football into our living rooms, when a game was all but decided, Meredith would serenade the TV audience with, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over … .” Similarly, a winning outcome for oil prices is beginning to feel a bit futile as well after a plunge from above $100 per barrel this summer to the mid $60s in December. Saudi Arabia’s bombshell OPEC announcement on Thanksgiving Day, that it would not constrict global supply at this time, sent a tenuous market—and U.S. oil producers’ hopes—tumbling.

In the following days, Morgan Stanley predicted Brent crude could fall as low as $43 per barrel by midyear. Global Hunter Securities categorized the forward price of oil as “unforecastable” in the near term. Although the commodity game clock never reaches zero, hunker down, for this is the new norm for now.

The question, then, is how do producers respond, and what gets pinched?

Wells Fargo analyst David Tameron in November observed, “Budget decisions loom as crude lingers below the magic number,” that number being $80/bbl WTI, a “line in the sand” drawn by producers during the third-quarter earnings season. With the price of oil hovering around $63 at this writing, a growing coterie of companies is coming to grips with the inevitable—it’s time to rein in budgets.

Super independent ConocoPhillips is one of the first to definitively announce budget cuts, trimming 20% off of its 2014 $20-billion outlay. The Gulf of Mexico and Eagle Ford and Bakken shales are in; Permian, Niobrara, Montney and Duvernay are out, a “deferral of spending” on North American unconventional plays, per the announcement. “We are setting our 2015 capital budget at a level that we believe is prudent given the current environment,” said Ryan Lance, chairman and CEO.

PDC Energy in early December committed to a truncated capital budget of $557 million, 14% off of its 2014 spend and 27% below what it guided in August. Some 90% of that budget will be funneled into its inner and middle core areas of Wattenberg Field, where it is drilling for Niobrara and Codell shales. The company reports returns of 33% and 16%, respectively, in the inner and middle cores at $50 oil. The outer core Wattenberg is out, as is PDC’s Utica Shale drilling program, which will wind down in early 2015.

Halcon Resources is standing down in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS), instead throwing its capex at the Bakken and East Texas Eagle Ford, aka “El Halcon.” Floyd Wilson, Halcon CEO, said that he would do his darndest to make sure everyone knows he is highly confident in the play, but “it is currently a relatively high cost play and, with currently low crude oil prices, we will not be devoting a significant portion of our resources to TMS in the near term.”

Bakken pure player Oasis Petroleum reported it would concentrate activity on deeper acreage in North Dakota while dropping 10 rigs to just six, mothballing Montana Bakken.

Matador Resources, too, intends to scale down its two-rig Eagle Ford program, which is largely HBP, and focus on its Delaware Basin delineation drilling. Apache Corp. is carving capex by 26% by putting the brakes on its Granite Wash plays.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Wunderlich Securities analyst Irene Haas Dec. 9. “We expect U.S. producers to retreat to their best return projects and to cut spending aggressively to protect their balance sheets while riding out the downturn.”

Interestingly, none guided negative growth post cuts. Conoco projects a 3% uptick in production, Apache 12% to 16%, Oasis 5% to 10%, and PDC a full 50% volume increase. These results, presumably, are from drilling only the star players.

Like others, Continental Resources is pulling back its planned 12% capex increase in 2015 to flat overall, yet it is otherwise throwing caution to the wind by unwinding its forward hedge positions, a bold move no doubt.

Continental chairman and CEO Harold Hamm said, “We view the recent downdraft in oil prices as unsustainable given the lack of fundamental change in supply and demand. Accordingly, we have elected to monetize nearly all of our outstanding oil hedges, allowing us to fully participate in what we anticipate will be an oil price recovery.”

Oh, that Harold’s bet would pay out. While the lights might be going out for today’s party, there’s always the anticipation of another game next week.