Alisa Obrivanova Brings a New Energy to Wonderama and a New Generation of Viewers

From Times Square broadcasts to Wonder Games, the model, spokesperson and television personality is helping shape the next chapter of one of America’s most enduring children’s entertainment brands

There are television shows that survive because audiences remember them fondly, and then there are shows that figure out how to become relevant all over again.

Wonderama is doing the latter — and Alisa Obrivanova is becoming an important part of that transformation.

A model, spokesperson and television personality, Obrivanova has stepped into a featured co-hosting role on the legendary children’s entertainment program alongside Chuck Armstrong, better known to Wonderama audiences as Chuckie. Together, they are helping introduce the long-running franchise to a generation that experiences entertainment very differently from the children who first discovered Wonderama decades ago.

For Obrivanova, that means doing much more than standing in front of a camera.

Her role places her at the center of live entertainment, music, gaming, digital culture and the kind of audience participation that has increasingly become part of Wonderama’s identity. Whether she is broadcasting from Times Square or interacting with young performers and creators, Obrivanova brings an approachable, upbeat presence that fits naturally with the spirit of the show.

That was especially evident during Wonder Games, Wonderama’s ambitious live event held August 25 in Times Square.

Built around the theme “The Games Everyone Can Play,” the event transformed one of the world’s most recognizable public spaces into a celebration of gaming, music, technology, accessibility and young talent.

Obrivanova co-hosted the festivities with Chuckie and David Osmond as Wonder Games brought together an esports showcase presented with the Empire State Esports Federation, accessible-gaming demonstrations with AbleGamers, and appearances by emerging musicians, digital creators and performers associated with FENIX360.

Among the performers appearing throughout the event were Kylie Marshall, Renee Leavitt and Korean hard-of-hearing boy band Big Ocean, whose participation reflected one of the day’s central ideas: entertainment becomes more powerful when more people are invited into it.

It is an idea that suits Obrivanova particularly well.

Rather than treating young audiences simply as spectators, the new Wonderama increasingly asks them to participate, compete, perform, create and become part of what is happening. Obrivanova’s easy interaction with guests and audiences helps make that philosophy feel genuine rather than manufactured.

Her work with Wonderama also extends well beyond Wonder Games.

Obrivanova has become a familiar presence during the program’s extraordinary 24-hour New Year’s Eve celebration, broadcast live from the top of One Times Square.

It is an unusual television challenge. As midnight arrives across the globe — beginning with New Zealand and continuing through successive time zones until the famous Times Square Ball Drop — the broadcast becomes part entertainment program, part international celebration and part marathon live television event.

For a host, that kind of production requires stamina, spontaneity and the ability to make an enormous global event feel surprisingly intimate.

Obrivanova has shown she can do exactly that.

There is something particularly fitting about her emerging role in Wonderama.

The program itself has spent decades evolving. Once known primarily as a beloved American children’s television institution, Wonderama has been reinvented for a world of streaming, social media, gaming, digital creators and global audiences while holding onto the curiosity and optimism that originally made the show work.

Obrivanova represents much of that same crossover.

Her background in modeling and spokesperson work gives her the polish required for major broadcasts, but her television presence is considerably less formal. There is an accessibility to her on camera that matters when the people standing beside her might be professional entertainers one moment and excited children experiencing Times Square for the first time the next.

That balance is difficult to manufacture.

And it may be one reason Obrivanova increasingly feels less like a guest within the Wonderama universe and more like one of the personalities defining where it goes next.

The August Wonder Games offered perhaps the clearest glimpse yet of that future.

Esports shared the stage with live music. Accessibility became part of the event rather than an afterthought. Digital creators appeared alongside television personalities. Young audiences weren’t simply entertained; they were invited to participate.

At the center of all of it was Obrivanova, helping connect the individual pieces into something that still felt unmistakably like Wonderama.

For a television franchise with generations of history behind it, the temptation would be to spend too much time looking backward.

Instead, Wonderama appears increasingly interested in what comes next.

And Alisa Obrivanova is becoming one of the faces taking it there.