From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business.

We all know the successful Bill Cosby.

What we don't know is, you know, the number of professional setbacks that he's had along the way,

but also the personal struggle and pain.

Journalist Mark Whitaker explores a life of Dr. Bill Cosby in a new biography

of the renowned comedian and pitchman. We talk about Cosby's business savvy and the controversy

that Whitaker left out of his book. But first on the news banter, fall out from a staggering deal

for basketball rights, and a fledgling agency goes under. Stick

around. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my buddy in banter, Matt Bellany, the Hollywood reporter. Hello, Matt. Hi there.

So, Matt, a huge deal, again in sports, Time Warner in the shape of its Turner division and ESPN, coughing up $24 billion for NBA rights.

Not as much as NFL, but still a big, almost tripling in the Turner's case, the fee it had been paying for this.

And we know why, because live sports are

live. Live sports are the future as well. They consider DVR proof. But I think it's also interesting that

the same week that this deal was announced, Turner also said that they're going to be laying off

about 10% of its staff. So there's a direct correlation here. The huge amounts of money that

are being paid for sports rights while the companies and people who work there are going to be

suffering for this because they've got to outlay all this money. Yeah, there's multiple agendas here.

There's a question of do you drive consumers away by paying more and passing along the fee?

And Turner has made it clear that they certainly are expecting bigger subscriber fees

from cable companies to carry that network.

And basketball is a part of it.

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