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.

MEASURE FOR MEASURECAST - In the oddly incestuous field of media research it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe. And you don't have to conduct much research to find a better example of that than the on-again, off-again romance of Arbitron and VNU.

FETES OF CLAY - Ever wonder what's on the minds of the world's greatest magazine editors when they're in the process of producing the world's greatest magazines? Turns out, they're full of Clay. Yeah, Clay, the name, not the organic substance.

YOU SAW THE CAMPAIGN, NOW HERE'S THE POST-BUY (OR IS IT POST-VOTE?) ANALYSIS - The outcome of the 2004 presidential campaign has been well documented, but the efficacy of presidential media strategies is only now coming to light via an unusual post-buy analysis courtesy of Draft Inc. And while George W.

REST IN PEACE - Well, it's official. The demo is dead.

TRIUMPH OF THE SHILL: STERN HOSTS SATELLITE RADIO RALLY IN UNION SQUARE PARK -- The Riff often likes to take in the pastoral tranquility of Union Square Park to get away from all the noise of the media world. But on this afternoon, it was sadly not to be, as an estimated 4,000 Howard Stern fans were penned in on the North side of the park, waiting for their idol to make a special appearance.

HIX NIX PIX ADS - A variety of well regarded sources are projecting that cinema advertising - ads that appear before movies in theaters, not ads for movie theaters - is poised to become one of the fastest growing forms of ad-supported media. The problem, according to some new research, is moviegoers don't like the ads all that much, and would like to see movie theaters stop running them.

WE'RE KEEPING OUR EYE ON THE BALL -- Until this year, there were only two things we knew about Ball State University: That it is David Letterman's alma mater; and that it has a funny name. Now it's beginning to rival such ivory media towers as Syracuse's Newhouse School, NYU's Tisch School, and MIT's Media Lab as an academic authority about media.