Adult Video News(also calledAVNorAVN Magazine) is anAmericantrade magazine that covers the Adult video industry.The New York Timesnotes thatAVNis topornographic filmswhat Billboard is to records.^[3]AVNsponsors an annual convention, called the Adult Entertainment Expo or AEE, in Las Vegas, Nevada along with an award show for the adult industry modeled after the Oscars.^[3][4]

AVNrates adult films and tracks news developments in the industry. AnAVNissue 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 describedAVNarticles to be more like infomercials than articles, but he also described theAVNmagazine as “sort of the Variety of the US porn industry.”^[1]

Paul Fishbein, Irv Slifkin, and Barry Rosenblatt foundedAVNin 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 theSan Fernando Valleywhere it operates to this day.^[7]Fishbein sold the company in 2010.^[2]

AVNis widely quoted for various figures about the adult industry and its revenues.^[8][9][10]AVNestimated 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”. WhenForbesaskedAVNhow 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]AVNestimated that adult industry revenue in 2005 was $12.6 billion with $2.5 billion of that coming from the Internet. However,ABC Newsreported 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]

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.

AVNsponsors 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 theUnited States.^[15]

AVNalso 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 thatAVN, in 1997, reviewed over 4,000 new releases in every category in comparison to the 375 films that theAcademy Awardswere required to see for the Oscars.^[1]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 Timesdescribe 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 aJenna Jamesonlove 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]

AVNalso 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,AVNdecided to separately host the GayVN Awards.

AVNproduces 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 TVGay News.