 | |
 Cover of the March 2012 issue | |
| Categories | Trade magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Publisher | Tony Rios[1] |
| Total circulation (2006) | 40,000[2] |
| Founded | 1983; 42 years ago (1983) |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Chatsworth, California, U.S. |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0883-7090 |
Adult Video News (also calledAVN orAVN Magazine) is an Americantrade magazine that covers the adult video industry.The New York Times notes thatAVN is topornographic films whatBillboard is to records.[3]AVN sponsors an annual convention, called theAdult Entertainment Expo or AEE, inLas Vegas,Nevada along with theAVN Awards, an award show for the adult industry modeled after theAcademy Awards.[3][4]
AVN rates adult films and tracks news developments in the industry. AnAVN issue can feature over 500 movie reviews.[5][6] The magazine is about 80% ads and is targeted at adult-video retailers. AuthorDavid Foster Wallace has describedAVN articles to be more likeinfomercials than articles, but he also described theAVN magazine as "sort of theVariety of the US porn industry."[2]
Paul Fishbein, Irv Slifkin, and Barry Rosenblatt foundedAVN in 1983 inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania. Slifkin left in 1984; having lost interest in reviewing adult movies due to the industry's transition fromfilm tovideos. Rosenblatt and Fishbein had a falling out in 1987. Eventually, Fishbein moved the magazine to theSan Fernando Valley where it operates to this day.[when?][7] Fishbein sold the company in 2010.[8] Theo Sapoutzis became chairman and CEO of AVN.[9] Tony Rios became owner and CEO of AVN in August 2015.[1]
AVN is widely quoted for various figures about the adult industry and its revenues.[10][11][12]AVN estimated that the sales and rentals of adult videos topped four billion dollars in 2000[10] and 2002.[11]Forbes has called this figure "baseless and wildly inflated". WhenForbes askedAVN how it arrived at this figure, Mike Ramone the managing editor at the time 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.[10]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.[12] According to Michael Goodman of theYankee Group, it is difficult to estimate for an industry where few companies are public and new providers continually appear.[13] By 2018, Dan Miller, AVN's managing editor said, "The safe estimate is to say it’s worth billions, but I don’t know exactly how many billion, and no one does."[14]
AVN sponsors an annual convention, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE), held each January inLas Vegas.[18]
AVN also hosts an award show for the adult industry modeled after theOscars.[19][20][21] The awards feature over 100 categories and has an attendance of over 3500 people.[22]David Foster Wallace skeptically noted thatAVN, in 1997, reviewed over 4,000 new releases in every category in comparison to the 375 films that theAcademy 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".[23]The New York Times noted that the "precise criteria for winning an AVN are not, well, explicit".[24] Awards often go to consistent advertisers in AVN.[25]
Sports columnistBill Simmons commented that the Awards were "the most secretly captivating telecasts on TV" alongside theNational Spelling Bee andWestminster Kennel Club Dog Show.[26]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 aJenna Jameson love doll and telling your friends you had sex with the porn star".[27] Even Tyla Winn, an award winner, had trouble remembering one of her sex scenes that was nominated.[24]
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.
...earned seven Adult Video News awards, referred to as the Oscars of porn.
...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.
