I was fairly shocked to learn that Ken Ober died two days ago. The guy was only 52 years old, and he didn’t seem like he was deathly ill or anything. In fact, he had been working up until recently.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, you must be over fifty or under twenty years old. From 1987-1992 Ober hosted the MTV game show Remote Control. It was one of the first serious changes in MTV’s business strategy, as they began to move away from strictly showing music videos (dumb). The show was goofy fun, built on the premise that Ober lived in his mother’s basement and secretly held a game show down there. The contestants were buckled into lounge chairs and asked a series of pop culture questions. Losing contestants were removed out of the basement still strapped to their chairs.

The show made Ober something of a celebrity, although he never became super-famous. Probably part of that was due to his laid-back, nonchalant attitude. Ober was very intelligent and quite funny, but he never seemed pompous or arrogant; he seemed like a guy who might make a pretty good friend.

The show launched the career of Adam Sandler – thanks a lot for THAT one, MTV! – and also helped make Colin Quinn temporarily famous. But it was Ober in the center of the fray that grounded the show and made it fun to watch.

Someone apparently thought to videotape an early episode in 1987, which you can now see via the glories of YouTube: