The following thread appears on Adult DVD Talk, www.adultdvdtalk.com

Arthur posts: My feeling is that the AVN awards tend to favor companies that produce vanilla porn over companies that produce the more hardcore, adventurous stuff. I disagree with so many of their recent awards, it’s not funny. I would be interested to know if others feel the same way.

nietzsche posts: Uh, there are probably about 50 million people who will agree with you.

Earl writes: Who would you suggest take their place? While I agree that they’re not always indicitive of what’s going on, neither are ANY award show, really.

And AVN is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to industry magazines. They’re *the* trade journal, like it or not… Websites haven’t knocked them off that perch; not wil they.

So who else you got? This isn’t like Hollywood where there’re guilds and unions (i.e the SAG Awards, Director’s Guid, etc.) and a variety of critics organizations (i.e the Hollywood Foreign Press’ Golden Globes, the Television Critics Awards) or networks with enough muscle (the MTV Movie Awards, etc.)

You have XRCO but they’re really not all that large nor influential. Ask any generic porn fan, and they’ve never heard of them.

You have all the websites who give awards, but half the people getting the awards don’t even know who they’re getting the awards from, let alone if the sites even exist.

And all of them combined couldn’t come close to filling the grand ballroom at the Venetian. AVN can, and that’s why their awards aren’t going anywhere.

So, you might as well start your own awards. The Arthurs. Post your list, have some trophies made and try to get people to show up somewhere to pick them up.

p_ramezap writes: I think it’s a case of “you rub my back I rub yours”. The companies that produce vanilla crap also make the most money through TV/cable/satellite deals. so they have the muscle to promote their crap through AVN by buying a lot of advertisment as regular customers. In return, AVN gives those companies or those who are associated with them, awards, therefore more exposure. I don’t think their awards are really a recognition of what the fans like at all, maybe in a few cases here and there, Otherwise it’s a farse and all about money.

hardware writes: Last time I checked, it looked like everybody was pretty well represented in AVN. Maybe Vivid and some others do get rewarded for spending more but I suspect a couple of other factors are in play as well. First, the old boys network. Second, AVN may want to present a glamourous image of porn to the outside world.

Ransey writes: I never could/can understand those awards for companies like Vivid, Wicked and VCA especially when one of these companies ‘beats’ a company like Evil Angel. I guess that should say enough. Btw, I thought it was no big secret that Fishbein only gives awards to those companies who support his magazine, that should explain why Vivid and Wicked gets so many awards.