Mad Men won Best Drama its first year at the Emmys. And Bryan Cranston surprised everyone by winning the Best Actor Emmy. You were there. What was your reaction?

CC: I was sitting with Josh and Ed, and when Bryan won, I turned to them and said: "Now we're a network. We have two shows." With Mad Men, everyone said, "Well, anyone can do one." Which I totally disagree with. But when we had two, people started saying, "Well, maybe AMC had something to do with it." Our goal was always to see people's passion projects, and to see the best material first. One of the more satisfying parts of the evolution of AMC, and one that will hold us in good stead moving forward, is now we're seeing the best talent and high-end creators first. During broadcast pilot season, people were waiting for us to decide before they went to broadcast. That, in a short amount of time, is one of those moments of creative evolution that feels really satisfying.

I'm sure it's hard to pick among your children. But where does your taste lie? People lump Mad Men and Breaking Bad together because they're both on AMC, but really, they have nothing to do with each other.

CC: Look, I have four children in real life. And I can tell you which ones are my favorites, but you're recording this. No, you do love and enjoy and appreciate them all for what they are. And you approach them all differently. Then you go to the shows — just because of the children analogy — and you approach them all differently, too. Vince sets a great tone. But it's a different tone from what Matt Weiner sets — which is a great tone for what he needs to accomplish. Where my taste lies, I am awed by the artists. And I don't mean just the writers, though we do end up talking about Matt and Vince a lot, and their writing teams, who they'll be the first to tell you deserve so much credit. The throughline for me is that working with these artists is the most rewarding thing in the world.

With someone like Vince Gilligan, who obviously has a vision for the show, how does creative feedback work? Does it start out being a lot at the beginning of a series and then practically none at the end?

CC: Look, you work with a Vince Gilligan — we trust Vince Gilligan. In Vince we trust! Many conversations back and forth; we all have our roles to play. But Vince, come Season 5, is writing the show Vince wants to write, because Vince has earned the right to do so. Our job is to support him and respect him and try to get him where he wants to go. Because his vision is what we've invested in.

He asked for one thing, which was out of the ordinary in a way, which was to write to the end. He said, "This is about the transformation of Walt White from Mr. Chips to Scarface." And he said, "Let me know when it's going to end so we can collaborate on it. And so we can write to an ending."

That brings us to the Season 5 negotiation, which was covered a lot because it had some bumps. This was how it was told at the time: You guys wanted the show to have a short final season, Sony wanted it to keep going, and in fact even went to FX to possibly take Breaking Bad there?

CC: No, no, no. I will say this: When people are passionate about projects, and we've gone from being no-profile to having some high-profile projects, a lot of noise gets out in the press that is pretty normal business. And I'll say our relationship with Sony is very good. And our relationship with Vince is incredible. Really, what we were talking about is what I just said, which is, "How do we bring the show to conclusion in a fitting way?" Sony played their role and AMC its role, and certainly Vince played his as well. There was some back and forth, and there was some noise. But it was never for anything but to let Vince write to conclusion in enough episodes that he could get his proper story told.

But if Vince Gilligan had had his druthers, would he have ended after Season 5, or was he saying, "I've got eight seasons in me"?

CC: Bryan's character — bad things are happening, and this had to come to a head. It had an end. It always had an end. I think it ends incredibly well, but as Vince always said, "This is not going to end well."

Someone who used to work at AMC Networks once said to me, "The answer to every question of, 'Why did this weird thing happen there?'" is "Because they have budget pressure that other successful cable channels don't have." The ugly Matt Weiner negotiations, the Walking Dead showrunner musical chairs —

CC: We're certainly not the only network to have high-profile negotiations become public. But when they do, it's unfortunate, because typically what we're talking about is not any of that. It's always about the show and how to keep the longterm value of the show. I don't mean "value" in terms of business — I mean quality of the show and what it means to the brand. More often than not, it's been harmonious.

AMC has had to fight with cable providers to get more money out of them to increase the carriage fees for the channel. Have you seen progress there?

CC: Our value has been recognized as our investment in quality has continued to grow. Upon our renewals, there's no question that AMC has become one of the must-carry networks, and with that comes a higher valuation.