As Harry Potter fans know, during a game of Quidditch the player known as the Seeker desperately tries to capture a small flying ball called the Golden Snitch. When the Seeker succeeds, he scores a whopping 150 points for his team and the game ends.

Meanwhile, there’s all this other frenetic and suspiciously pointless Quidditch-related activity going on. Aside from the Seekers, each team has six others players (dubbed Chasers, Beaters and a Keeper) who fight over an entirely different ball (the Quaffle) and try to get that ball through small hoops at ends of the field.

If they succeed, they score a mere 10 points and the game continues.

Author J.K. Rowling established these wildly unpractical rules for her alleged team sport in her first Potter book and she likely has no regrets. Since the Seeker has the awesome power to (A) end the game and (B) effectively score 15 goals at once, Rowling’s narrative would have to bend over backwards to allow any character to ever take center stage during a Quidditch match except the Seeker – which, naturally, is the position played by her story’s protagonist Harry Potter.

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You know those scenes in apocalyptic disaster movies that show people reduced to fighting over dirty water or a bare-bones shelter or scraps of food to survive?

That’s what it’s like watching the broadcast networks struggling to program their airwaves during the writers strike.

Now NBC and ABC have stepped into the Thunderdome to fight over celebrity circus reality shows.

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For those who have been missing “Deal or No Deal” this month, the NBC game show stalwart has been embarking on a “million dollar mission” to award a contestant $1 million. Each episode where a player fails to win the top prize, another $1 million suitcase is added to the board so that, sooner or later, even the gleeful, math-challenged chipmonk contestants of “Deal” will finally be able to stumble into big bucks.

Since this ratings-boosting stunt started, contestants have lined up to “No Deal Howie!” their way to record-setting six figure offers … then “No Deal Howie!” their way right back down to earn relative squat.

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