"The day we both left (around 2009/2010), both of those companies turned around and in some ways throttled Hulu," he told Variety editor-in-chief Claudia Eller at the Variety Dealmakers Elite breakfast, alleging that Fox and NBC increased the ad load on Hulu and began holding back content. "Every single person at Fox hated Hulu," he added.

"That should've been the dominant streaming platform," said Chernin. "I would argue that their throttling of that in the four to five years after that is potentially one of the bigger mistakes that's been made in the media business. There's no reason Hulu shouldn't be Netflix today. The fact that it isn't is because they didn't lean into it during that time. I think it's a phenomenal lesson in how big companies should treat disruption. We're in the midst of enormous disruptions, and if you think you're going to protect yourself against this disruption, you're out of your mind. You're not, and your job at these companies is to lean into disruption and anticipate it before anybody else."