AVN (magazine)

Adult Video News (also called AVN or AVN Magazine) is an American trade magazine that covers the adult video industry. The New York Times notes that AVN is to pornographic films what Billboard is to records.[3] AVN sponsors an annual convention, called the Adult Entertainment Expo or AEE, in Las Vegas, Nevada along with the AVN Awards, an award show for the adult industry modeled after the Oscars.[3][4]

Adult Video News
Cover of the March 2012 issue
CategoriesTrade magazine
FrequencyMonthly
PublisherTheo Sapoutzis[1]
Total circulation
(2006)		40,000[2]
Founded1983 (1983)
CountryUnited States
Based inChatsworth, California, U.S.
LanguageEnglish
ISSN0883-7090

AVN rates adult films and tracks news developments in the industry. An AVN issue can feature over 500 movie reviews.[5][6] The magazine is about 80% ads and is targeted at adult-video retailers. Author David Foster Wallace has described AVN articles to be more like infomercials than articles, but he also described the AVN magazine as "sort of the Variety of the US porn industry."[2]

History

Paul Fishbein, Irv Slifkin, and Barry Rosenblatt founded AVN in 1983 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Slifkin left in 1984; having lost interest in reviewing adult movies due to the industry's transition from film to videos. Rosenblatt and Fishbein had a falling out in 1987. Eventually, Fishbein moved the magazine to the San Fernando Valley where it operates to this day.[7] Fishbein sold the company in 2010.[1]

AVN is widely quoted for various figures about the adult industry and its revenues.[8][9][10] AVN estimated that the sales and rentals of adult videos topped four billion dollars in 2000[8] and 2002.[9] Forbes has called this figure "baseless and wildly inflated". When Forbes asked AVN how it arrived at this figure, the managing editor responded, "I don't know the exact methodology... It's a pie chart." When asked to separate the figures for sales versus rentals, a standard practice among those who cover the video industry, the editor did not think those figures were available. Adams Media Research noted that no one tracked the adult video business with rigor or precision and that the most generous estimate of sales and rentals combined was $1.8 billion.[8] AVN estimated that adult industry revenue in 2005 was $12.6 billion with $2.5 billion of that coming from the Internet. However, ABC News reported that this figure could not be independently verified.[10] According to Michael Goodman of the Yankee Group, it is difficult to estimate for an industry where few companies are public and new providers continually appear.[11]

Notable alumni

AVN Europe

In October 2007, AVN launched the first ever pan-European, English-language adult industry trade-magazine, AVN Europe, with editorial offices based in Budapest, Hungary. For about two years, AVN Europe published monthly issues with reviews and news items as well as in-depth background articles on such topics as historical development, distribution patterns and women's erotica. By mid-2009, following a change of editorial staff, the publication lowered its ambitions somewhat, focusing more on photos from trade shows and other light-weight content. It folded soon after; the last issue was June 2009.

Adult Entertainment Expo
Main article: AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

AVN sponsors an annual convention, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE), held each January in Las Vegas. The Expo is the largest pornography industry trade show in the United States.[15]

Award Shows

AVN Adult Movie Awards
Main article: AVN Awards

AVN also hosts an award show for the adult industry modeled after the Oscars.[16][17][18] The awards feature over 100 categories and has an attendance of over 3500 people.[19] David Foster Wallace skeptically noted that AVN, in 1997, reviewed over 4,000 new releases in every category in comparison to the 375 films that the Academy Awards were required to see for the Oscars.[2] This number increased to 8,000 for the 2008 Awards and Paul Fishbein comments that it is "a very long, horrible process".[20] The New York Times noted that the "precise criteria for winning an AVN are not, well, explicit".[21] Awards often go to consistent advertisers in AVN.[22]

Sports columnist Bill Simmons commented that the Awards were "the most secretly captivating telecasts on TV" alongside the National Spelling Bee and Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.[23] Violet Blue, the sex writer, describes the Awards as "big backslapping event where the same companies and same names win year after year... To think of the 'porn Oscars' as a true representation of porn's very best is like having sex with a Jenna Jameson love doll and telling your friends you had sex with the porn star".[24] Even Tyla Winn, an award winner, had trouble remembering one of her sex scenes that was nominated.[21]

GayVN Awards
Main article: GayVN Awards

AVN also sponsors the GAYVN Awards which are presented annually to honor work done in the gay pornography industry. Awards for gay adult video were a part of the AVN awards from 1988 to 1998. In 1999, AVN decided to separately host the GayVN Awards.

AVN Online

AVN produces a publication dedicated to online adult business trends. In print and on the web, AVN Online publishes articles devoted to the diverse adult internet experience, such as a story about the Village TV Gay News.

See also

References
  1. Nick Wingfield (January 9, 2012). "Silicon and Silicone Split, as C.E.S. and Adult Entertainment Expo Part Ways". The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
  2. David Foster Wallace (March 12, 2006). "First Chapter – 'Consider the Lobster'". The New York Times. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  3. Timothy Egan (October 23, 2000). "EROTICA INC.—A special report.; technology sent Wall Street into market for pornography". U.S. The New York Times. Corrected October 25, 2000. Archived from the original on November 12, 2017. Retrieved November 12, 2017.
  4. Steve Kroft (September 5, 2004). "Porn In The U.S.A." 60 Minutes. Archived from the original on January 3, 2008. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  5. Frank Rich (July 27, 2003). "Finally, Porn Does Prime Time". The New York Times. Retrieved August 9, 2014.
  6. DPA, Los Angeles (July 17, 2003). "Porn loses seedy image, becomes mainstream in US". Taipei Times. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  7. Anthony Layser (January 9, 2008). "Porn Supremacy". Philadelphia Weekly. Archived from the original on January 12, 2008. Retrieved January 18, 2008.
  8. Dan Ackman (May 25, 2001). "How Big Is Porn?". Forbes. Archived from the original on December 13, 2007. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  9. Bill Keveney (October 16, 2003). "Hollywood gets in bed with porn". USA Today. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  10. Jonathan Silverstein (January 19, 2006). "Is Porn a Growing or Shrinking Business?". ABC News. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  11. Sue Chen (November 25, 2002). "San Fernando's Open Secret". CBS News. Retrieved December 11, 2014.
  12. "AVN Names New Managing Editor". Adult Video News. January 26, 2000. Archived from the original on July 9, 2012. Retrieved April 16, 2008.
  13. Gelt, Jessica (January 28, 2014). "Anthony Lovett dies at 52; humorist wrote 'L.A. Bizarro' guidebook". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
  14. "Tony Lovett Steps Down as AVN Publisher and Editor-in-Chief to Pursue Creative Ventures, AVN, November 19, 2010.
  15. Stephen Clark (April 1, 2006). "Ex-stripper evangelizes to sex industry". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on December 9, 2007. Retrieved January 4, 2008.
  16. "The Oscars of porn". The Sydney Morning Herald. January 9, 2006. Retrieved July 25, 2007.
  17. Brent Hopkins (June 3, 2007). "Porn: The Valley's secret industry". Los Angeles Daily News. Archived from the original on June 6, 2007. Retrieved July 25, 2007. ...earned seven Adult Video News awards, referred to as the Oscars of porn.
  18. David Schmader (March 9, 2000). "Porn's Big Night". The Stranger. Retrieved July 25, 2007. ...the most prestigious event in the world of adult film: the Adult Video News Awards, hereby known as the AVNs, popularly known as the porno Oscars.
  19. Stuart McGurk (March 4, 2006). "And the winner is ..." The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 10, 2008. Retrieved January 4, 2008.
  20. Adam Tanner (January 14, 2008). "Porn industry seeks recognition with annual awards". Reuters. Retrieved January 15, 2008.
  21. Matt Richtel (January 10, 2006). "A Night to See the Stars Actually Wearing Clothes". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 12, 2011. Retrieved January 5, 2008.
  22. The teenager & the porn star: will 18-year-old Sasha Grey become the adult film industry's next Jenna Jameson? Los Angeles Magazine
  23. Bill Simmons (May 31, 2002). "Great sports any way you spell it". ESPN. Retrieved January 2, 2008.
  24. Violet Blue (January 18, 2007). "The Rise of Indie Porn?". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on January 6, 2008. Retrieved January 4, 2008.
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