On Sunday night, AMC's Mad Men walked away with the Emmy for best drama or comedy series, and AMC's Breaking Bad left the stage with a best actor Emmy for Bryan Cranston (best known for playing the Malcolm in the Middle dad). You might have assumed this was because Jon Hamm is an excellent actor who owns the small screen for 60 minutes each week. Or because Mad Men's showrunner Matthew Weiner knows just how long to let the camera hang on a scene. Or because in Breaking Bad, Cranston comes off brilliantly as a terminal meth producer.

All of which, in theory, is true. But the reason AMC — a basic cable station — left with its arms full on Sunday night wasn't because of its programming fare. It was because AMC mounted a glorious Emmy PR campaign, and it paid off.

Last year, after the success of the network's launch of its first-ever longform, "Broken Trail," which rustled up 9.8 million viewers, AMC decided to go prospecting for Emmy gold. Shrewdly, execs hired Murray Weissman, a veteran Oscar campaigner who once had been PR chief of the TV academy, and agreed to spend generously for the necessary investment. Weissman worked closely with AMC general manager Charlie Collier, PR chief Theano Apostolou and marketing gurus Gina Hughes and Alison Hoffman, and together they struck a motherload on awards night: "Broken Trail" won four Emmys, including best miniseries and actor (Robert Duvall).

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Encouraged by that result plus positive reviews for its first-ever drama series, "Mad Men," AMC decided to take the plunge again, proceeding aggressively to crank up the ballyhoo for that show plus ratings sleeper "Breaking Bad."

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The Emmy campaigns began early in 2008 for both TV series. "Breaking Bad" missed out on the Globes and guild kudos because it wasn't eligible, being launched in January, but hype for Emmys debuted right along with the rookie show. Again, there was a hefty ad push in the trade papers and in the print and online versions of The Envelope, and each TV series took out double-page-spread ads in Emmy Magazine.

"Single-page ads in Emmy Magazine aren't enough," says Weissman. "HBO and other networks go in with spreads, so you should too." And, of course, Q&A screenings were held across Hollywood (one of which, for The Envelope's first Emmy Screening Series, was moderated by yours truly).

Last year AMC had to pay a hefty sum to rent out the TV academy's auditorium for a special event inviting members to meet the creators of "Broken Trail," but thanks to all of the TV critics' huzzahs for "Mad Men," that series was showcased this year as one of the academy-sponsored evenings.

"The DVDs were shipped to TV academy members a little later than I would've liked," Weissman says. "Just around the same time voters are being deluged with other screeners, but the DVDs were beautifully packaged, so maybe the production delay was OK."

Then AMC pulled off its savviest ploy. It scheduled the debut of the second season of "Mad Men" on July 21, so new hype about the show buzzed across Hollywood around the same time Emmy nominations were announced July 17 and the final round of voting commenced. Strategic launching of a show's new season has paid off for other networks in the past — like HBO, which frequently launched new episodes of "Sex and the City," for example, in June when academy members voted on nominations.

So: Out with fall premieres, in with summer premieres?

[LAT]