A Day in the Life: CJ Olivares

Cable World, May 23, 2005

Fuel's surf king and CW's hodad catch some waves.

By Mavis Scanlon

These days, surfing is more of a passionate weekend hobby than a daily ritual for CJ Olivares, SVP and assistant GM at Fox Cable's action sports network Fuel. Still, there are those days when the tide is just right, and he can't resist the prospect of catching a few early morning sets.

On my way home from the NCTA convention in San Francisco, I met Olivares in his hometown of Manhattan Beach, Calif., for a surfing outing-cum-lesson. Sadly, it was not one of those aforementioned days. I arrived that early morning just as high tide was peaking, making the waves crash close to shore. I spotted Olivares talking with two young surfers who had just wrapped up their own daybreak surf session. Turns out the teens, Kyle and Hunter, both tan and blond, were brothers, kids of friends who live nearby.

"They're my neighborhood focus group," Olivares told me. "Big Fuel fans." They've been skating, surfing, snowboarding and wakeboarding--all Fuel sports-- for a while, he said. Adelphia, the local cable operator, has yet to launch Fuel in Manhattan Beach, but Olivares expects it to be picked up soon.

As a "hodad," or non-surfer, I relied on Olivares to show me the ropes. We wriggled into wetsuits, mine provided by Olivares. At first I put it on backwards--a classic hodad move. Olivares pulled two boards, one long, one short, out of his SUV, and we made our way down to the beach. With the boards positioned on the sand, he showed me the basics of paddling and jumping up to standing position once you catch a wave. As the wave starts to surge, he said, you have to get yourself into a push-up position, and from there jump to standing, with both feet properly aligned, in one move. He made it look easy. It wasn't.

It had only been about two weeks since Olivares himself had been back in the ocean following a freak injury he sustained on Christmas Day. He was riding a wave inside the tube, when it closed out on top of him, pushing him underwater. The board came back toward him and the tailboard hit him square in the chest and cracked his sternum. Ouch.

"That was the longest I haven't been in the water in years and years," he said.

Even during a stint in Chicago, he and his wife often returned to Southern California to visit family. Vacations were--and still are--mostly in Hawaii, where they rent a cabin on the beach. He even managed to swing a sales client trip to the Aloha State for the Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters last December, during which the guests were treated to surfing lessons. Some of them even managed to stand up.

Olivares grew up near the beach in Orange County, and taught himself to surf by the age of 12, sometimes spending as much as eight hours a day in the water. His three daughters, ages 9, 6 and 2, take after him--the two older girls are on the swim team and the toddler is fearless in the ocean.

We paddled out past the breakers, down the beach from the dozen or so surfers, some sitting on their boards with legs dangling on either side, scanning the horizon for the next set. Olivares was more concerned with getting me positioned facing the shore to catch the next wave than he was about catching them himself. I managed to catch four or five waves between long waits. I never did manage to stand up, but had a blast careening to shore, holding on to the board for dear life.

Near 9 a.m., we had to start thinking about getting to work, but Olivares wanted to wait for that one last wave that I could catch and actually surf standing up. I was happy enough just floating around on a surfboard, 50 yards from shore. Finally we had to give up. He had network budget meetings to get to. "I'm sorry the waves didn't cooperate a bit more," he said as we carried the boards up the beach.

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