LOS ANGELES TIMES — Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and ESPN and Time Warner Inc.'s TNT agreed Wednesday to pay the National Basketball Association $7.4 billion over eight years for rights to televise the games and, in one of the first deals of its kind, stream game-related action on the Internet and mobile devices. The new deal, which begins in 2008 and runs through the 2015-2016 season, works out to an average of about $930 million a year. That's a 22 percent increase from the $765 million annual average under the current agreement, industry sources said. The expanded digital rights contributed to the increase, along with the continuing rise in the cost of television rights.
