As Murdoch bid for Sky reaches climax, the BBC cull begins

Jeremy Hunt's decision on the Sky bid is looming, but in the meantime the realities of the BBC's budget cuts have begun to sink in.

So, on Friday, BBC Monitoring - which monitors and translates foreign-language media and communications from across the world from its base in Caversham - announced redundancies.

BBC Online, meanwhile, will be slashing its spend by a quarter, reducing dramatically its spend in some of its more popular areas, making 'space' for commercial players and going some way to satisfying Cameron. News International et al.