The LA Times reports that the Walt Disney Co. and the NBA have reached an agreement in principle on a new national television contract in which Disney, the parent company of ABC and ESPN, will pay the league an average of $400 million a year. The deal with Disney means NBC's 12-year relationship with the NBA will end after this season's championship series.

The NBA's new television contract, expected to be finalized and announced early next week, also will include Turner Broadcasting and its parent company, AOL Time Warner, and those entities will pay $250 million a year. The combined rights fee under the new contract will be $650 million a year. That represents $30 million a year more than what NBC and Turner are now paying under the final year of a four-year contract.

Beginning next season, games will be on ABC, ESPN, TNT and a new channel, AOL Sports, a joint venture between AOL Time Warner and the NBA.

A source said ABC would televise only 15 regular-season games next season, plus the NBA finals. The number of ABC regular-season games, less than half of the 34 NBC will televise this season, would probably increase slightly each season during the life of the contract, the source said.

ESPN and TNT would share in coverage of the playoffs through the conference finals. ABC would carry only the finals. It would not televise weekend early round games. Also, TNT would televise the NBA All-Star game.

AOL Sports, according to several sources, would carry four games a week over a 25-week span. ESPN would carry games twice a week through the season, possibly Fridays and Sundays, and TNT might end up with Thursday doubleheaders. AOL Sports is expected to replace CNN/SI, which reaches slightly more than 20 million homes.

Details of the regular-season cable schedule--such as which outlet will get which nights--have to be worked out. But it appears there could be national telecasts six nights a week, double the number now offered by Turner's TNT and TBS.