Wanna Be a VJ was a show and contest on MTV. Contestants were selected from the crowd around MTV's Times Square office, and narrowed down via challenges testing the applicants' music knowledge and personality. Once narrowed down to six contestants, viewers were allowed to vote for contestants via telephone and internet. The winner was awarded $25,000 and a one-year contract to be a Veejay on Total Request Live. It is one of the first examples of electronic democracy in the United States. All three events were hosted by Carson Daly.
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In the first Wanna Be a VJ contest, the tall, spacey Jesse Camp beat out the more knowledgeable but less flamboyant Dave Holmes. However, MTV ended up extending job offers to both men, and Holmes ended up being more popular than Camp in the long run, hosting various shows on MTV until 2001.
Camp's unexpected victory caused many viewers to suspect foul play. The Village Voice ran an article in which an unnamed source who only identified by his online handle "UglyPig" claimed to have hacked the voting site, allowing him to vote more than 3000 times.
The second Wanna Be a VJ contest was won by 21 year old Thalia DaCosta, from Sunrise, Florida, who took home $25,000.
The third Wanna Be a VJ contest was won by Ray Munns.
Ray Munns went on to defend his job fives times on a live show entitled VJ4ADAY, where he and the contestants introduced the eleven through fifteen videos of TRL. Ray was the first ever half Korean VJ (he is also a quarter Irish and a quarter English) and was the first contest winner to stay longer than a year at MTV.
Runner up Shannon Wiseman, of Dallas, North Carolina, became a co-host for UPN's "Atlanta Tonight" in 2004 and the host of "NASCAR.com's Post Race Show presented by Jack Daniels" in 2005.