Who founded FUEL TV and why was Fox chosen as a partner?
(FUEL TV Bandits & Artist L to R – CJ Olivares, Maricruz, Shon Tomlin) In 1997 I was at Fox Sports Net doing program development and acquisition. Among the concepts I pitched to the network while working for Fox Sports was a show called Rush Hour which was successful from ratings and revenue standpoint. Late in 1998 I pitched the idea of FUEL TV to top executives but they werent ready for it. A year later I left to create Bluetorch which became very successful from a TV standpoint. In late 2000 Fox started looking at the idea of creating an Action Sports network. In the middle of 2002 I was approached by Fox with a business plan but no creative vision for the network – what it should be and represent. Fox invited me in and asked me to put together a whitepaper of sorts to give FUEL TV some creative context. A few months later Fox brought me in to say here are the keys to the car, figure it out. In December 2002 I started out on my own and over the next 4 months put together a team of p
