On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Chernin was asked by New York Magazine's John Heilemann about his role in creating Hulu and why he steered Fox to co-create it in the first place.
From the Hulu blog, here is a good explanation of Chernin's role in starting Hulu:
"For those who aren’t aware, Peter Chernin, along with Jeff Zucker (CEO of NBC/Universal), are the two most important reasons why Hulu exists. Hulu, or to be precise, NewCo., started as a handshake agreement between those two leaders. Peter and Jeff became the nucleus of what was to become Hulu’s Board of Directors."
"Going in, I had two things in mind," Chernin stated. Primarily, he was focused on competing with DVRs. The problem, he elaborated, is that DVRs time-shift content and, more importantly, let users fast-forward through commercials, which account for the vast bulk of TV revenue.
"The DVR is a fairly negative development for content creators," he stated emphatically.
The second reason why he got so involved with Hulu was to combat piracy. Instead of taking the music industry's approach to piracy (suing the users), he offered a new method of fighting piracy. "You fix it by offering them a clean, easy-to-use, reliable service at an appropriate price," Chernin said to the applause of the audience.
Chernin is still bullish on the company he helped start. He says there is huge, pent-up demand for video advertising on the web. Hulu, he mentioned, gets double the CPMs of broadcast television because it has much lower ad load; you can't fast-forward through the ads; and it offers an active, "lean forward" experience rather than a passive, "lean back" experience. Hulu ads are also among the best-testing ads in terms of recall.