Video jockey

MTV-Type VJ's

VJ stands for "Video Jockey," and was a term coined in the early 1980s to describe the fresh faced youth who introduced the music videos on MTV. Originally hired to represent a wide array of musical tastes and personal ethnicities, these individuals eventually became famous in their own rite. Essentially they were nothing more than on-air personalities, but as the popularity of MTV grew, they began to branch out past just introducing music clips. Soon they were considered by many to be full fledged music journalists, interviewing major music celebrities and hosting their own television shows on the network.

As time progressed and MTV's format changed, VJ's began to host game shows, talent contests and the like. Soon they were given their own shows based on the type of genre that their "demographic" was interested in.

Some of the individuals who have been VJ's (and their consequent gigs) are:

Julie Brown (actress, comedienne, singer, screenwriter)

Martha Quinn[?] (Noxema[?] commercials)

[["Downtown" Julie Brown]] (different than the other, singer, DJ)

Kurt Loder[?] (news journalist)

Simon Rex (actor, appeared in gay-themed pornography)

Kennedy (journalist, political satirist)

Carson Daley (host of "Carson Daley Show")

Ananda Lewis[?] (hostess of "Ananda")

Jon Norris[?] (journalist)

and many others

Live Visual Artists

Although less known in the mainstream, the word VJ is also used to represent video performance artists who create live visuals on all kind of music. It originates from a parallel with DJ's, although most VJ's nowadays have more to do with musicians than with DJ's.

For more information check AudioVisualizers (http://www.audiovisualizers.com) and VJCentral (http://www.vjcentral.com)