AVN (magazine)

Adult Video News (also called AVN or AVN Magazine) is an American trade journal that covers the adult video industry. The New York Times notes that AVN is to pornographic films what Billboard is to records. AVN sponsors 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.

AVN rates adult films and tracks news developments in the industry. An AVN issue can feature over 500 movie reviews. 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."

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. Fishbein sold the company in 2010.

Pornographic film

Pornographic films, or sex films, are films that present sexually explicit subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction of the viewer. Pornographic films present sexual fantasies and usually include erotically stimulating material such as nudity. A distinction is often made between erotic films and pornographic films on the basis that the latter contain more explicit sexuality and usually do not claim any artistic merit, or aesthetic appeal.

Pornographic films are produced and distributed on a variety of media, depending on demand and the technology available, including traditional film stock in various formats, video for home viewing, DVDs, Internet download, cable TV and other media. Today, pornographic films can be sold or rented on DVD, shown through Internet streaming and special channels and pay-per-view on cable and satellite, and in rapidly disappearing adult theaters. They are generally not permitted to be shown in mainstream cinemas or free-to-air television.