TELEVISIONSoccer Scores With Viewers: The first weekend...

TELEVISION

Soccer Scores With Viewers: The first weekend of World Cup soccer action drew a big crowd of TV viewers locally, ratings from the A.C. Nielsen Co. showed Monday. The Mexico-Norway game got the highest ratings in Southern California, with KMEX-TV Channel 34 drawing about three times its normal Sunday afternoon audience. About 315,000 homes tuned in to the Spanish-language station, with another 180,000 watching on ESPN. The U.S.-Switzerland contest Saturday drew about 485,000 homes to KABC-TV Channel 7 and KMEX.

New Teen Fare: Matthew Lawrence, the younger brother of “Blossom” co-star Joey Lawrence, will star in “Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad,” DIC Entertainment’s new high-tech, live-action syndicated program set to premiere next season on KTLA Channel 5. Lawrence plays a teen computer genius who accidentally stumbles upon an evil warlord operating within the digital universe. Stage and film actor Tim Curry supplies the voice of Lawrence’s nemesis, the diabolical Kilokahn. . . . The “Saved by the Bell” gang will return to prime time in October with “Wedding in Las Vegas,” an NBC TV movie featuring the nuptials of original series members Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Amber Thiessen). . . . Cynthia and Brittany Daniel, known to TV commercial fans as the “Doublemint Twins,” will play Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the 16-year-old heroines of “Sweet Valley High,” a new half-hour syndicated series based on Francine Pascal’s best-selling teen novels. The series premieres this fall on KTTV Channel 11.

Watergate Redux: Twenty years after Richard Nixon’s resignation, journalist Daniel Schorr revisits the scandal that ended Nixon’s presidency in “Watergate,” a new miniseries airing on cable’s Discovery Channel Aug. 7-10. Schorr, now a senior news analyst for National Public Radio, was CBS News’ chief Watergate correspondent and earned three Emmy Awards for his coverage, which also earned him a spot on Nixon’s infamous “enemies” list.

‘Interactive Advice’: America’s Talking, the new NBC-owned cable channel that debuts July 4, has announced plans for “Ask E. Jean,” a weekday offering billed as TV’s “first interactive advice show.” The program stars author E. Jean Carroll, a former beauty queen who is now a contributing editor for Esquire magazine.

STAGE

Coming to L.A.: The Los Angeles premiere of “Assassins,” the controversial Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical, has been slated for Nov. 22--the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Los Angeles Repertory Company plans to produce the show in Theatre 4 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. The musical survey of famous American assassins premiered Off Broadway in 1991.

ART

Free Thursdays: The downtown Museum of Contemporary Art is expanding its annual “Summer Nights at MOCA” program--which features free museum admission from 5 to 8 p.m., guided exhibition tours, art talks, live jazz music and complimentary appetizers--to every Thursday evening, starting this week and running through Aug. 25. This week’s featured exhibition is “Urban Revisions: Current Projects for the Public Realm.”

POP/ROCK

Ticketmaster Hearings Set: Rock group Pearl Jam and Ticketmaster chairman Frederic D. Rosen will square off in Washington on June 30 when a House Government Operations subcommittee convenes to examine possible anti-competitive practices in the ticket distribution industry. Other prominent music figures--some of whom have already been interviewed by the Justice Department--will be invited to testify.

QUICK TAKES

Fans of “The Little Rascals” will soon be able to see Spanky, Alfalfa and the gang in color. Culver City-based CST Entertainment Imaging Inc. has announced plans to spend $1.5 million to colorize 850 minutes of the classic TV series. . . . MTV’s animated Beavis and Butt-head characters will star in their own video games, to be published by Viacom New Media for Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo and Sega Game Gear. The games will go on sale this fall. . . . Disney’s Buena Vista Home Video on Friday will release 10 home video titles in Spanish, including the Disney classics “Beauty and the Beast,” “Pinocchio” and “Alice in Wonderland.”