The media company laid off 23 of 111 employees at the soon-to-be-delisted SPH AsiaOne Ltd., its online division, and 73 of 380 jobs from its television broadcast unit, MediaWorks.

``We have decided to bite the bullet early,'' AsiaOne chief executive Low Huan Ping said in a statement.

The layoffs at AsiaOne, equivalent to 21 percent of the work force, will affect its Web publishing, electronic shopping and lifestyle content businesses.

The announcement comes a month after the parent company announced a plan to take the Internet unit private due to the tough operating environment.

The 19 percent cut in jobs at MediaWorks come primarily from TV Works, which is shedding 65 people. TV Works is the company's English-language channel, which has struggled to achieve target ratings against MediaCorp, the state-owned dominant broadcaster in Singapore.

Singapore Press Holdings publishes the Business Times, the Straits Times and several other major publications in Singapore.

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