“BIG BROTHER” MAKES TRIUMPHAN RETURN

CBS’s long-running summer-replacement series Big Brother returned Sunday night and showed that there’s still plenty of life in the reality show. Sunday’s debut episode at 8:00 p.m. attracted 6.97 million viewers, the same number who tuned in to the network’s 60 Minutes in the previous hour, but it topped the granddaddy newsmagazine in adults 18-49 by 156 percent. The figures represented a big jump from a year ago, when Big Brother debuted with 6.29 million viewers. In other ratings news, Niclas Ericson, FIFA TV director for the World Cup, told reporters on Sunday that, when final ratings figures come in, he believes a record will be set for the final contest in which Spain defeated the Netherlands. “I think the audience for the final will be bigger than 2006, when it was watched by 700 million people,” he said. News reports indicated that close to 90 percent of TV viewers in Spain and the Netherlands watched the contest.