Comcast 2015 Annual Report Download - page 33

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 dis-
tributor, including the amount of compensation, if any, paid to the station by such distributor. All of our NBC
and Telemundo owned local broadcast television stations have elected retransmission consent through
December 31, 2017. Increasingly, our cable networks, broadcast television and filmed entertainment busi-
nesses have entered into agreements to license their prior season and library content on other distribution
platforms, including subscription video on demand services, and some multichannel video providers are offer-
ing smaller packages of channels as part of their streaming and linear television programming packages. In
addition, certain online entities may stream our broadcast television content online without our consent and
without paying any compensation to us. As a result, there can be no assurance that any of our distribution
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 our distribution revenue and 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 manage-
ment, 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 break-
downs, 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 equipment,
data and properties. 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, and any such
events could have an adverse effect on our results of operations.
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 sig-
nificant 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 occur-
ring, 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,
and operate a comprehensive security program, seeking to prevent systems-related events and security
breaches from occurring, the development, maintenance and operation of these systems and programs is
costly and requires ongoing monitoring and updating as technologies change and efforts to overcome secu-
rity measures become more sophisticated. Despite any efforts to prevent these events and security breaches,
Comcast 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K 30