When the AVN Expo was a tiny little division of the Consumer Electronics Show, the adult area, as it should have been, was a curtained-off ghetto. I never went to the AVN Expo when it was part of CES, but since I attended both shows this year, I got versions of the breakup story from several people.
I walked into CES press registration on Monday with a laptop loaded with a few technology-related press clippings. I was not pre-registered. I got my press badge and an excellent computer bag within five minutes.
“Are you also going to the AVN show?” the registrar asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“We used to handle their registrations, but they dumped us,” the woman said.
“Why?”
“I think we were more expensive than who they use now.”
Throughout CES, my laptop was always on the web, password-free.
I spoke with several other writers who remembered when AVN was part of CES.
“AVN was the best part of CES,” one freelancer told me. “It would drain attendees from the surrounding exhibits. A lot of guys just sort of backed slowly into the AVN show, hoping no one would notice.”
Former AVN editrix Rebecca Gray was there the final year AVN and CES were shacked up.
“Eventually CES started posting signs on the bathrooms warning people that ‘adult performers might be changing inside’,” she said. “That was offensive to a lot of people.”
It sounded like the two entities were drifting apart.
After press registration for AVN, which took me 40 minutes despite pre-registration, confirmation e-mails, multiple recitations of my real name (Ronnie James Dio), and fortuitous encounters with people who knew me, I was approached by several CES attendees who offered to purchase my badge. I couldn’t do it; I didn’t want to go back to the press room, which was populated like the cantina on Mos Isley and offered sporadic, password-protected Internet access, and go through the line again.
For Internet access I snuck into AVN’s VIBE (Very Important Business Executives) Lounge, and the staff there were very friendly. I was often the only person there. I was thankful for it, but wondered why AVN hadn’t made the same resources available for press.
A certain wretched excess characterized CES the same way AVN seemed parsimonious. In a keynote speech by Dell CEO Michael Dell, Mike Myers as Dr. Evil showed up on stage to perform an inane skit that might not have been funny even five years ago. I couldn’t focus on their script because I was too busy wondering how much Myers was being paid. (I finally decided he was being paid a lot.)
Since AVN and CES overlapped at the Sands, I often went back to CES’ press room to post for my site, Gamelink, and G4TV. There were hearty lunches and delightful snacks. The room closed when CES closed on Thursday, and some other writers complained that it was stupid to close the press room with the convention – they could not file their stories. I just sat outside in the hall; the press room was closed but they hadn’t turned their router off.
It was interesting how both entities dealt with their press. AVN was far more wary, and kept setting up barriers that made gaining access difficult. For example, I had to go to one place for my press badge, will need to go to another place for my red carpet access, and yet a third place for my tickets to tomorrow’s show. One badge did everything at CES.
My suggestion for AVN is to integrate press credentials and make badge pickup available prior to the Expo for those who pre-register. Having temps handling registrations on site, who loudly ask attendees why they have two names, also seems like something that practical people might avoid.
Despite signs like the one at the top of the page, there was a free market in wrist bracelets and swapped badges, making me wonder why we went through all the trouble.
One thing is certain: CES had better swag but AVN had better booth girls.
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