500 words on Ken Ober

Remember when MTV played music videos? Do you remember when all MTV did was played music videos? I do, but just barely. I was not even three years-old when MTV premiered, and we didn’t have cable so even if I could remember it I wouldn’t have seen the Buggles kill the radio star.

We didn’t get cable until we moved into the second house I lived in, and so the earliest the chance I’d have to see television changed forever would be around 1983. While I was always pretty mature, I was most likely watching Pinwheel and I only met Martha Quinn and her pals later in their tenure. I was, however, following MTV by 1987 when the music got turned down for 30 minutes and “Remote Control” took over the television.

It’s interesting to me that the first series not built around music videos would be a game show. In hindsight, it seems easy to understand. It wasn’t “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” If memory serves, winners would walk home with maybe a couple thousand dollars of prizes. I imagine a six year-old cable network, even if it would grow into a television empire, probably wasn’t busting at the seams with money for talent and production. “Remote Control,” with its zany cast of characters might have just been the perfect answer.

Ken Ober was the ringmaster of a circus that would include such soon-to-be famous names like Colin Quinn, Dennis Leary, and Adam Sandler. Ken was the leader of Generation Slacker and embodied the paradoxical reality of the do-nothing-loser/television personality. His dry wit and seemingly savant knowledge was the perfect blend for the MTV audience and its 2 minute-45 second attention span.

Ken Ober died this week. (Not Keith Olberman, so stop it with the party hats and streamer, okay Bill O’Reilly?) It doesn’t seem like he died of an overdose, and it wasn’t a bloody car crash. Ken Ober, who was only 52, died of natural causes, and he was only the host of a poor-quality cable game show that was cancelled before junior high.

I miss Ken Ober.

In fairness, if “Remote Control” had been a miserable failure and MTV didn’t venture out of the music video business we would’ve been saved from “My Super Sweet 16,” “Pimp my Ride,” Trischelle, and “this is where the magic happens” may never have become part of our cultural lexicon. If Ken Ober had been more of a failure, we might never have met Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. How long will we have to hold that against Ken?

When someone dies, I think we often spend time thinking about how it impacts us. When the host of a television game show – one cancelled almost 20 years ago – we think about our lives 20 years ago. Ken Ober shouldn’t have much impact on my life, but I can’t stop thinking of my favorite part of the show:

Na, na, na. Na, na, na. Hey, hey, hey. Good-bye!