Mergers: Help From a Big Brother

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A decade ago, TV Producer-Perform er David Susskind was generating some bright cultural rays with quality net work dramas and a provocative new talk show, Open End. At the same time, California Industrialist Norton W. Simon, president of Hunt Foods & In dustries', was making commercial his tory by buying up one new company after another. Since then, Susskind has been putting somewhat less emphasis on culture, and Simon has become in creasingly interested in it. Stung by a number of critically acclaimed produc tions that proved to be financial flops, Susskind has expanded into bread-and-butter situation shows, notably NBC's Get Smart series. Simon has consol idated the bulk of his holdings — Hunt Foods, McCall Corp. and Canada Dry Corp. — into a $1-billion-a-year opera tion, now devotes much of his time to collecting art and serving as a Uni versity of California regent.

Last week the old culturist and the old commercialist got together. Norton Simon Inc. announced that it had agreed to acquire Susskind's Manhat tan-based Talent Associates Ltd. as a wholly owned subsidiary. Although Si mon remains his conglomerate's biggest stockholder, he has left its active man agement largely to Chairman William E. McKenna, who engineered the Tal ent Associates acquisition as a way of expanding his firm's activities in the communications field. Through McCall Corp., Norton Simon Inc. already pub lishes McC all's magazine (circ. 8,500,000). McKenna looks to the new prop erty for "important growth" in the field of communications.

Retired Mouth. As Talent Associates' president, Susskind shares that expec tation. Privately held by himself and two equal partners, Daniel Melnick and Leonard Stern, the company had rev enues last year of about $15 million, and its profits were in "the seven-figure category." That was a vast improvement over past years, when Talent Associ ates suffered in no small part because of its voluble boss's knack for alien ating network brass. But Susskind has learned to confine his contrariness large ly to his still running TV talk show.

He says cheerily that his mouth is now "in partial retirement."

Besides its television work, Talent As sociates has also engaged in a limited way in feature-film production (Requi em for a Heavyweight, A Raisin in the Sun). Referring to Norton Simon Inc.

as "a powerful financial helpmate, a big brother," Susskind now hopes to plunge more deeply into moviemaking by bidding for bestselling books and other high-priced material. He will have the incentive as well as the resources.

Under the terms of the get-together, Susskind and his partners will receive an undisclosed amount of Norton Si mon Inc. stock, run Talent Associates for at least five years.