Comcast 2014 Annual Report Download - page 40

Table of Contents
affiliation agreements with third-
party local broadcast television stations in the markets where we do not own the affiliated local
broadcast television station. In addition, every three years, each of our owned local broadcast television stations must elect, with
respect to its retransmission by multichannel video providers within its DMA, either “must-carry” status, in which the distributor’
s
carriage of the station is mandatory and does not generate any compensation for the local station, or “retransmission consent,”
in
which the station gives up its right to mandatory carriage and instead seeks to negotiate the terms and conditions of carriage with
the distributor, including the amount of compensation, if any, paid to the station by such distributor. In the course of renewing
distribution agreements with multichannel video providers, we may enter into retransmission consent agreements on behalf of our
owned local broadcast television stations. All of our NBC and Telemundo owned local broadcast television stations have elected
retransmission consent through December 31, 2017. Our ability to continue to receive compensation from distributors as part of our
retransmission consent negotiations may be adversely impacted by online entities that stream our broadcast television content
online without our consent and without paying any compensation to us. Increasingly, our cable networks, broadcast television and
filmed entertainment businesses also have entered into agreements to license their prior season and library content on other
distribution platforms, including subscription video on demand services. There can be no assurance that any of these agreements
will be renewed in the future on acceptable terms, or at all. The loss of any of these agreements, or the renewal of these
agreements on less favorable terms, could reduce the reach of our television programming and its attractiveness to advertisers,
which in turn could adversely affect our cable networks, broadcast television and filmed entertainment businesses.
We rely on network and information systems and other technologies, as well as key properties, and a disruption, cyber
attack, failure or destruction of such networks, systems, technologies or properties may disrupt our businesses.
Network and information systems and other technologies, including those related to our network management, customer service
operations and programming delivery, are critical to our business activities. Network and information systems-
related events,
including those caused by us or by third parties, such as computer hackings, cyber attacks, computer viruses, worms or other
destructive or disruptive software, process breakdowns, denial of service attacks, malicious social engineering or other malicious
activities, or any combination of the foregoing, or power outages, natural disasters, terrorist attacks or other similar events, could
result in a degradation or disruption of our services, excessive call volume to call centers or damage to our properties, equipment
and data. These events also could result in large expenditures to repair or replace the damaged properties, networks or information
systems or to protect them from similar events in the future.
In addition, we may obtain certain confidential, proprietary and personal information about our customers, personnel and vendors,
and may provide this information to third parties, in connection with our business. While we obtain assurances that these third
parties will protect this information, there is a risk that this information may be compromised. Any security breaches, such as
misappropriation, misuse, leakage, falsification or accidental release or loss of information maintained in our information technology
systems, including customer, personnel and vendor data, could damage our reputation and require us to expend significant capital
and other resources to remedy any such security breach, and could cause regulators to impose fines or other remedies for failure to
comply with relevant customer privacy rules.
The risk of these systems-
related events and security breaches occurring continues to intensify in many lines of business, and our
lines of business may be at a disproportionately heightened risk of these events occurring, due to the nature of our businesses and
the fact that we maintain certain information necessary to conduct our business in digital form stored on cloud servers. In the
ordinary course of our business, there are frequent attempts to cause such systems-
related events and security breaches, and we
have experienced a few minor systems-
related events that, to date, have not resulted in any significant degradation or disruption to
our network or information systems or our services or operations. While we develop and maintain systems seeking to prevent
systems-related events and security breaches from occurring, the development and main-
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Comcast 2014 Annual Report on Form 10
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