AMC 2008

A month ago, we drew your attention to an advertising campaign for the Showtime hit Dexter that featured the show’s lead character on multiple mock magazine covers. Earlier tonight, The New Yorker‘s Drew Schutte asked the network’s CEO Matthew Blank and Dexter himself, Michael C. Hall, about the buy.

“It’s weird. It’s overwhelming. I can’t compete,” Hall said of seeing his face everywhere. “There are too many of me.”

Blank pointed to last year’s out-of-the-box campaign as a reason for this year’s. “The success of [last year's] campaign led us to believe that this Dexter character could be a pop culture hero,” he said. Ratings for the season premiere were up 20 percent so the CEO believes the covers were a success (although he also believes having the show on CBS helped.)

Blank explained that he wasn’t worried about new technologies interfering with Showtime’s business model, as long as entire episodes weren’t available for free. “We don’t have to get a viewer at 9 o’clock on a Sunday night,” he said. “We can get them at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night. We can get them On-Demand. We can get them on DVR. … We’re not in the eyeball business. We’re in the hearts and mind business.”

“Anything that samples our product to an audience of potential subscribers is good for us,” the executive added later.

How does Hall feel about the potential SAG strike?

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Advertising Age‘s editor-in-chief Jonah Bloom announced his publication’s “A-List” awards earlier tonight and The Economist won Magazine of the Year, beating out No. 2 Women’s Health and No. 3 Elle.

The latter book didn’t go home empty-handed, however, as Carol Smith won Ad Age‘s Publisher of the Year. Chris Johns, editor of National Geographic (No. 5), was awarded Editor of the Year.

The full list, and some choice quotes from Bloom, after the jump.

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At the kick-off event for the 2008 American Magazine Conference in San Francisco, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi opened the proceedings by telling the 400 magazine executives in attendance that she’s a “addict of magazines.”

“San Francisco is a magazine city,” the California resident added.

Pelosi couldn’t resist taking a few shots at the current administration, especially when discussing the failed shield law: “The shield law died in Senate because the administration didn’t want the bill to go through. … As soon as we have a new Congress and a new President, we will have a new shield law.”

In her closing, Pelosi credited magazines with helping to keep America strong. “Thank you for the information,” she said. “Thank you for the entertainment. Thanks you for the diversion. Thank you for the strengthening of our democracy you all provide.”

After her initial remarks, the Speaker answered three questions from audience members, all about the bailout. We’ll be posting a video of her answer shortly.

During tonight’s opening ceremony for the American Magazine Conference, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer interviewed Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The pair discussed Dreamworks’ foray into the 3-D world. “It will be the third great revolution,” Katzenberg said, comparing it to both the additions of sound and color to movies. “Movies today are the equivalent of vinyl records.”

3-D won’t be the silver bullet to fix bad moviemaking, however. “Here’s the thing that really pisses me off about 3-D. (Dramatic pause.) It actually will not make a crappy movie good,” the CEO lamented, adding “I think it will make good movies great.”

Katzenberg foresees a time in the near future when people have “movie glasses” they bring to the theater to view 3-D flicks. He’s currently working with a company to develop lenses that serve as sunglasses in the light but would change once a person entered a darkened movie house.

Katzenberg also mentioned a Los Angeles Times critic who disagreed with the executive’s vision of the 3-D world. “Just for sport, he takes out the baseball bat and kicks the crap out me on some subject or another,” Katzenberg said. “He called me the Harold Hill of 3-D.” In response to the column, the head honcho penned an article that appeared in Variety (after LAT brass refused the story.

But does he really read US Weekly?

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Tomorrow morning, we’re headed out to San Francisco for the 2008 edition of the American Magazine Conference. From Nancy Pelosi‘s keynote (hopefully it won’t cause massive panic like her last speech) to Arnold Schwarzenegger address (he killed it at last year’s Newsweek Global Environmental Leadership conference) it’s going to be all awesome, all the time.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll be bringing you coverage of the conference live and in person on FishbowlNY and our Twitter feed. We’ll also be doing video interviews with media bigwigs in the Bay Area. Video, so hot right now.

mediabistro.com ran an interview we did with Runner’s World editor-in-chief and current American Association of Magazine Editors president David Willey in which he discusses balancing his day job at Rodale and his work at ASME.

So Mr. Willey, is it tough running (ha!) a running magazine in difficult economic times? Not really:

“We’ve got an incredibly passionate readership, and I think running is one of those things in tough economic times — it doesn’t necessarily get cut from people’s lives. In fact, it may be the opposite. People are so passionate about it and it’s a part of their lives, and it helps them sort of stay in control. It helps them feel healthy, it empowers them — all those things that when life gets hard and economic times get hard, those things become even more important.”

Starting Saturday, FishbowlNY will be all over the AMC. You can follow our coverage here.