RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENTS: AEGIS CHIEF SPEAKS OUT ON NEW DIRECTIONS, ECONOMICS AND, OF COURSE, SEX - Many people still think of Aegis Group as a holding company for media services shops like Carat and Vizeum, but the reality is that Aegis has emerged as one of the global powerhouses in marketing and media research, according to some interesting stats trumpeted Monday by CEO Douglas Flynn. Speaking during Aegis slot at the UBS Media Week conference in New York, Flynn noted that anywhere from 35 percent to 40 percent of Aegis' revenues now come from research vs.

DARLING YOU GOT TO LET ME KNOW -- We always knew that when it comes to analysis of media industry securities, Merrill Lynch's Lauren Rich Fine rocks. But when we received her equities research report about the newspaper industry on Thursday, we realized just how much she actually rocks.

SWEPT UNDER THE RUG - Normally we try to ignore all the hype and network spin that surround Nielsen's ratings sweeps. Who's on first? Who cares? Even if the quarterly snapshots were a relevant measure of network performance, agencies don't buy on the basis of quarterly prime-time averages and advertisers certainly don't run their ads that way.