Ken Ober - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Born Kenneth Oberding in Brookline, Massachusetts, he was raised in Hartford, Connecticut. Ober hosted four game shows over the course of his career. He received his break after appearing as a contestant on Star Search. He was most widely known for his role on the MTV game show Remote Control, which he hosted for three seasons, spanning 1987 to 1990, then in reruns for an additional two years. That show also helped launch the careers of Adam Sandler, Denis Leary, and Colin Quinn. Ober was known among '90s and '00s audiences for his hosting jobs on Make Me Laugh, Smush, and the ESPN game show Perfect Match.

In 1995, Ober hosted a Los Angeles talk radio show with former Brady Bunch star Susan Olsen. The show, known as Ober and Olsen, aired on 97.1 KLSX. (Olsen had previously appeared on an episode of Remote Control that featured Brady Bunch cast members competing.)

In 2002, Ober served as supervising producer for Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, which was a reunion of sorts; Quinn was the announcer on Remote Control. He was also a guest on one episode.

Ober starred in the Blues Traveler video for the song "Hook". He also had a smaller role in the same band's videos for "Run-Around" and "The Mountains Win Again".

He served as a producer for the CBS comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine, and is also known for a series of Jenga commercials.

He was an original member of the Theta Mu chapter of the Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He graduated in 1980.

Read more about this topic:  Ken Ober

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:

    ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.
    Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)