  BATSE Earth occultation data have been used to search for emission in the
20-100 keV band from all sources in the Piccinotti sample, which represents to
date the only complete 2-10 keV survey of the extragalactic sky down to a
limiting flux of 3.1 x 10^(-11) erg cm^(-2)$ s^(-1). Nearly four years of
observations have been analyzed to reach a 5sigma sensitivity level of about
7.8x 10^(-11) erg cm^(-2) s^(-1) in the band considered. Of the 36 sources in
the sample, 14 have been detected above 5sigma confidence level while marginal
detection (3<sigma<5) can be claimed for 13 sources; for 9 objects 2sigma upper
limits are reported. Comparison of BATSE results with data at higher energies
is used to estimate the robustness of our data analysis: while the detection
level of each source is reliable, the flux measurement maybe overestimated in
some sources by as much as 35%, probably due to incomplete data cleaning.
Comparison of BATSE fluxes with X-ray fluxes, obtained in the 2-10 keV range
and averaged over years, indicates that a canonical power law of photon index
1.7 gives a good description of the broad band spectra of bright AGNs and that
spectral breaks preferentially occur above 100 keV.

Astrophysics