Back in the glory days of MTV, the channel's VJs were a ubiquitous presence.
When they weren't introducing videos, many of them were there for some of music history's
most iconic moments, whether as hosts or MTV News reporters.
The job doesn't really exist anymore, meaning our favorite VJs were forced to move on to
another career.
Let's check in on some of those familiar faces and see what they've been up to.
Carson Daly
Let's start with the most well-known of all the VJs, Carson Daly, who is still enjoying
a fairly high profile.
You know Carson: he made a name for himself as the original host of MTV's daily music
video show Total Request Live from 1998 to 2003, interviewing all the megastars of the
day, including Mariah Carey …
"These are just some folks on the nice street.
We like this."
"Mariah Carey has lost her mind.
I don't know exactly what's going on."
These days, he's the host of his own late-night show, NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly, as
well as NBC's The Voice, where he got to banter with rumored-ex hookup Christina Aguilera.
Ananda Lewis
The Hot Zone host Ananda Lewis was MTV's second biggest VJ sensation during the network's
TRL-fueled renaissance at the turn of the 21st century.
After leaving MTV in 2001, Lewis went on to to start her own syndicated talk show called
The Ananda Lewis Show, which only lasted for one season ...
"So the four of you are going to head to the back, and you seem like you can already tell
Christine, now I want to see if you can get to know Cynthia and Caroline well enough to
tell all three of them apart."
Since then, she worked briefly as a correspondent for The Insider in 2004, and also had a spot
on the celebrity version of The Mole that same year.
Ananda is now pretty much off the radar these days, with her last on-screen credit in 2010,
appearing in the documentary My Nappy Roots.
Downtown Julie Brown
With her charming British accent and huge personality, Downtown Julie Brown was one
of the network's big stars in the early days.
She launched her VJ career in 1990 as a host of Club MTV, the network's first dance show.
"I know what we wanna do.
Do you know what we wanna do?"
"Rock steady!"
"Yeah!
We're gonna rock steady right now."
Recently, she switched houses with WNBA star Lisa Leslie on Celebrity Wife Swap back in
2013 ....
"Come and see what I'm doing."
"Let's get the party started!"
"That is right!"
These days, you can catch her hosting her Sirius XM throwback satellite radio show '90s
on 9.
Tabitha Soren
Since she moved on from MTV, Tabitha Soren went from appearing in front of the camera
as a reporter for MTV News to working behind one as a professional photographer.
After accompanying her husband Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, on assignment, Soren
started photographing up-and-coming baseball players.
The project took on a life of its own, and even ended up as a book called Fantasy Life
in 2017.
Kennedy
Yep: that was former MTV VJ Kennedy interviewing Tabitha Soren.
The curly-haired, bespectacled Kennedy — real name Lisa Kennedy Montgomery — was a regular,
occasionally controversial presence during her stint at MTV from 1992 to 1997.
"Jared, we're gonna talk about My So-Called Life in a little bit, but now we have to get
back to the videos."
"Okay."
"It's an oldie but a goodie: here's Aerosmith's 'Janie's Got a Gun.'"
Her career has since taken a turn for the political, and she's now the host of a Fox
Business Network primetime show bearing her name.
"By the way, when did Bill Clinton turn into Billy Bob Thornton from Sling Blade?"
Sway
Sway Calloway made a name for himself at MTV starting in 2000 as a news correspondent.
The gig led to some pretty high profile interviews, including three chats with President Barack
Obama.
Sway popped up on MTV from time to time to host specials over the years, but his main
gig now is hosting his own satellite radio show, Sway in the Morning, on SiriusXM.
"It's the dawn of a new era, ladies and gentlemen.
Shia LaBeouf: #1 MC in Hollywood!
I said it!"
Matt Pinfield
As the host of MTV's alternative rock show 120 Minutes from 1995 to 1999 — and again
on MTV2 from 2011-2013 — Matt Pinfield's intense passion for music was always on display.
"You know everything, ever, about music."
Like so many of his fellow ex-VJs, Pinfield went back into radio after his stint on MTV
and later VH1, as the current host of both a morning show on KFOG San Francisco and the
nightly, nationally-broadcast alternative rock show Two Hours With Matt Pinfield.
Jesse Camp
Definitely one of the quirkiest VJs of all time, fan favorite Jesse Camp memorably beat
Dave Holmes in MTV's 1998 Wanna be a VJ competition ...
"It's the best job in the world, and so I was, I heard, y'know, hey … Why not?
Right?
Everybody can take a shot."
The next year, he appeared as a co-host of TRL.
After his contract was up, Camp tried to get his music career off the ground with a 1999
album Jesse & the 8th Street Kidz, but the album flopped.
He returned briefly to MTV in 2016 as host of a segment on the channel's Snapchat Discover,
and he appeared a few times on New York City public access comedy show The Special that
same year.
Dave Holmes
He may have come in second place to Jesse Camp in the first Wanna be a VJ competition,
but Dave Holmes still managed to score a gig as a regular co-host on TRL and other MTV
shows, like Say What?
Karaoke, until 2001.
He's hosted a handful of other projects over the years, and also dabbled in acting, appearing
on six episodes of Reno 911 starting in 2004.
Holmes recorded a video for the "It Gets Better" project in 2010 and candidly discussed his
experiences growing up gay and Catholic in multiple interviews.
These days, he's a podcast host and writer-at-large for Esquire, where he writes about politics
and pop culture.
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