Over on the Radio 4 blog Mark talks about his decision:

I will be leaving a job I have loved in October. I will miss almost all of it. But I always felt that I should not do much more than seven years as Controller of Radio 4 and by October I will have had the best job in the BBC for six of those years.

To read the full post and to leave a comment, head over to the Radio 4 blog.

Erik says: 'The thrust of our recent strategy submission to the Trust on BBC Online is that we need to do fewer things better. We know that the parts of BBC Online that our users really value are significant, coherent, regularly updated and provide a great marriage of content and technology. Products like News, CBBC and iPlayer all have these characteristics; we want much more of the site to have them in future.

A symptom of our previous, less focussed, approach is the number of top level directories - we have on BBC Online, some 400 (this does not include the many re-directs we set up to make it easy to promote sites in our broadcasts). A number of people have asked us to publish the list and anyone who is interested can access it at the end of the extended entry of this post or as a .txt file here.'

Meanwhile, since the post went live, it's interesting to note this response from PaidContent:UK.

To read the full post and to leave comments visit the Internet blog.

In the meantime, it's worth pointing out that the site's regular Great Moments and Object of the Week slots will now be appearing on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. This week's Object is Lord Reith's Broadcasting House cigar box!

To learn more about the differences and to leave your comments visit the Internet blog.

This week has seen the launch of a brand new collection based on the BBC's collection of material documenting 20th century feminism. It's designed to run in tandem with the launch of Vanessa Engle's three-part documentary series on BBC Four, Women, as well as the celebration of International Women's Day last Monday. I spoke to two of the site's producers, Emer O'Reilly and Kate Wheeler, about this fresh look at how women's roles in society have changed since the advent of the BBC.

Emer, who is an archivist with over 20 years experience at the BBC, revealed how the angle of the collection had been inadvertently inspired by a teenager who had used a previous archive collection on the Suffragettes to research a school project. The archive team wanted to help young people to understand what happened next in the story of the struggle for women's rights. The new collections reveal that although the Suffragettes won the battle to gain British women universal franchise in 1928, it was many years until anything like true equality was attained. For decades jobs were still advertised by gender and women's salaries stalled at a rate of approximately one third of their male counterparts.

Emer told me that one of her favourite programmes on the site - the story of Bella the Welder, drawn from the groundbreaking 80s series Out Of The Doll's House (the interviews were later re-broadcast as Voices From The Doll's House) - demonstrates the changes in women's rights perfectly. It documents the tale of a Scottish woman who, like millions of others, found employment during the Second World War, replacing a male workforce that had gone to fight abroad. In fact, by 1943 90% of single women and 80% of married women were involved in war work outside the home. Despite excelling at, and loving, welding, Bella was paid only half of a man's regular wage and was made redundant when the war ended. It wasn't until 1975's introduction of the equal pay and sex discrimination acts that she was able to eventually regain employment as a welder, despite years of interviews (often posing as a male candidate on paper!).

With such amazing material on offer, the Archive site's reputation and popularity is steadily growing. And while one of the biggest draws is still the steam train collection each addition increases the reach and appeal to broader sections of our audience. For example, the Feminist collection has already been much talked about on sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as on feminist blogs.

The team are particularly proud of its commitment to the true Reithian value of using the material as a way of providing historical context for educational purposes. Indeed, the one of the site's next projects - set to coincide with the launch of a new 'face' of Dr Who - not only looks at the show's evolution but also aims to use the time lord's encounters with real figures from history to reveal the true stories behind key events. Add to this, amongst many other treats, an in-depth look at how general elections have been covered by us over the years and the release of classic material from Richard Feynman's Fun to Imagine series, supporting BBC Vision's Science season, and the future looks very bright for the BBC's past!

The major newspapers tended to repeat the main message of the Times' article with the Telegraph reporting, 'BBC to drop radio stations and cut web pages', the Guardian stating: 'BBC ''to axe radio stations and halve website'' in strategic review' while the Independent went with 'BBC surrenders to commercial pressure to prune its services'. Similar reports appeared amongst many online press, music and media journals such as the Wall Street Journal, Billboard, and the Register while both the FT and the BBC itself reported the growing chance of industrial action.

The key issue that piqued interest was the possible closure of 6 Music. Later that day the Guardian reported the growing... 'Opposition to closure threat regarding 6 Music' and the following day presenter Phil Jupitus contributed a piece headlined: 'Killing BBC 6 Music would be a slap in the face to licence-payers'.

The Guardian also emphasising the political aspects of the news with 'Shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey welcomes proposals for BBC cuts' although by today the story was, 'Tory culture spokesman joins 6 Music fanclub with U-turn over closure'. Meanwhile the Times returned to the subject via its business pages saying: 'BBC caps sport and ditches imported hits in shake-up'.

Editorially, The Times described the BBC as 'Big, bloated and cunning' and the Guardian and Observer typically invited comment from, amongst others Jude Rogers, Peter Preston, Jean Seaton and Emily Bell amongst others, as well as a piece stating that, 'Axed channels shouldn't mean a loss of character and flair.' Meanwhile there was a surge of interest in Facebook groups as well as Twitter campaigns.

By this morning the story was being looked at in more depth by James Robinson and Maggie Brown, while Patrick Foster again returned to the subject in the Times.

There will be a large amount of discussion and speculation around this particular subject over the next few days. It's worth noting that, as well as issuing an official statement on the BBC Press Office site, we have just re-launched the About the BBC website which will be publishing all the announcements on the BBC's Strategy Review and will also be providing links to, and coverage of conversations on the topic.

Online forums, blogs and specialist sites were very swift to pick up on the news, with most merely repeating what we published in our Internet blog. All the broadsheets gave fairly neutral reportage initially, with the Telegraph celebrating the news that football fans will be able to watch the World Cup on their smartphones. The Guardian and the Independent recognised that the reaction from other news organisations to the BBC News app may be less than enthusiastic. The Times also identified that: 'The move will also intensify the debate about paid-for content in the media sector.'

By this afternoon paidContent, Digital Spy and MediaWeek all reported on the move by the The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA): 'to lodge an objection with the BBC Trust calling on the governing body to apply its Public Value Test to the service'. Covering the same story, BBC News have reported that: 'A spokesperson for the BBC said that its online service licence, granted by the BBC Trust, was "quite explicit in allowing the BBC to repurpose its online content for consumption on mobile devices".'

Clearly, this is a case of 'watch this space'...

Erik's own blog post concerning the evolution and thinking behind the initiative is here on the Internet blog, as is David Madden's post demonstrating the News, Sport and iPlayer apps in more detail. And for even more detail we have Pete Clifton getting to grips with the implications of the BBC News app on the BBC Editors blog.

The BBC press release detailing the new mobile apps can be read here
To read the full posts and to comment click on the links above.

It's a fascinating insight into the creative proces that goes into rolling out a new look for the BBC online presence, as well as revealing that not only has the BBC Design and User Experience department been working with the legend who was art director of the Face in its peak years but that even way back in 1997 About The BBC was an integral part of the Corporation's web offering! (see pic above)

To read the posts and comment visit the BBC Internet blog

In addition to this we've published the total amount that we pay to artists, presenters, musicians and other contributors over the financial year that ended in March 2009. This comes to £229m - 6.56% of the Licence Fee (further details are contained here).

Here's a round-up of some of the headlines:

In the Daily Mail: 'BBC pays £230million every year to top presenters and actors'.

The Independent earlier in the day had the headline: 'BBC pays £229m a year for 'talent'' (though they later amended their online copy to read: 'BBC's top stars paid £54 million') while Broadcast gave us: 'BBC spent £229m on talent last year' (note: this is a subscriber only link).

The Guardian concentrated on the proportion that went to presenters earning more than £150,000 per annum with: 'BBC spent £54m on top-earning stars'.

Predictably, by this afternoon, the Evening Standard had escalated the revelation into an: 'Outrage over BBC cover-up of stars' £230m pay' - indicating that the story may still be appearing over the next few days.

Meanwhile the Telegraph while also running with the response of MPs to the talent disclosures ('BBC like the 'Duckhouse gang' for not disclosing star salaries, say MPs') but also focussed on the executive expenses, with: 'BBC executives' expenses up by 8 per cent'. Later in the day Broadcast also focused on executive cuts with: 'BBC execs cut back on presents' (subscriber only article), reporting that BBC execs had been, ' cutting back on claims for presents and extravagant schmoozing.'

In the first years of World War Two, the morale of the British population - who had already recently endured 'the war to end all wars' - was not good. To add to the gloom, the BBC had chosen to adhere to the government's recommendation to cancel all entertainment as unnecessary, leaving the populace faced with a dull diet of officially sanctioned news and organ recitals. As a result, even as early as September 1939, listeners began tuning into enemy broadcasts from Hamburg. At one point the figures approached 9 million.

It was apparent that the nation's broadcaster had to do something to stem the flow as well as playing a role in boosting flagging spirits. As a letter from an army major pointed out at the time, there was: ''only one real remedy and that lies entirely in the hands of the BBC''. Director General Frederick Ogilvie decided that a break from strict government guidelines was in order and thus was born a service that was tailor made for entertaining the troops as well as reinforcing British values through a broad range of cultural programming. In this sense we can thank Lord Haw-Haw for helping define the BBC we know and love today!

Emma who has led this project, has spent a lot of time drawing on both the BBC's document archive at Caversham as well as the audio library at Windmill Road. and is fast becoming the team's 'war expert'. Both producers were keen to point out the importance of the war, not just from a cultural perspective but also as a key moment in the BBC's archive itself as BBC staffer, M G Farquharson, realised how interesting these historic moments would be for future generations and more than doubled the amount of material that was preserved.

Kate's assessment of Ogilvie's brave decision is that it not only confirmed the importance of the Corporation's independence, but also ushered in a new era of British satire, as broadcasts like ITMA made fun not only of the Nazis, but also home front inconveniences such as food rationing.

2010 looks set to be a great year for the Archive site with more material being uncovered from the Corporation's war years, as well as key additions to the BBC's Year of Science and fascinating glimpses into past incarnations of Dr Who. Watch this space!