The AVN Awards are film awards sponsored and presented by the American adult video industry trade magazine AVN (Adult Video News) to recognize achievement in various aspects of the creation and marketing of American pornographic movies and they are called the "Oscars of porn".
The awards are divided into nearly 100 categories, some of which are analogous to industry awards offered in other film and video genres and others that are specific to pornographic/erotic film and video.[8]AVN sponsored the first AVN Awards ceremony in February 1984. The award ceremony occurs in early January during the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Since 2008, the ceremony has aired in a form edited for time on Showtime, which is usually broadcast in a 90-minute time slot.
Awards for gay adult video were a part of the AVN Awards from the 1986 ceremony through the 1998 ceremony. The increasing number of categories made the show unwieldy. For the 1999 ceremony AVN Magazine began hosting the GayVN Awards, an annual adult movie award event for gay adult video. However, it appears that the GayVN Awards have been discontinued; the last award year was 2010.