Of the two measures, Citadel's is by far the wiser, and may turn out to be a cutback that truly enhances the company if it means consultants give way to empowering local managers. Consultants all too often are a hindrance rather than a help, however well-meaning they may be, since they frequently don't know vital facts about the markets they're consulting and thus misread the markets or assume that what worked in one place will work in another only to find out they're wrong. Mistakes made by consultants eventually fall to local PDs to correct, sometimes after considerable losses in listenership and revenue while the consultant's ideas were being tried and were failing. I can think of ONE consultant I've encountered in my career who truly helped the station he was consulting...and in that case, he'd formerly been PD at that station, knew the market and the people well, and steered TPTB well as a result. But the other good stations I've worked with (and there have been many) all had one thing in common...relying on people resident in the market 24/7 to make the key calls, rather than any outsider.
As far as what Entercom's doing, hurting the people who've been working hard for you and helping you only leads to one thing...ensuring you're going to lose those people the moment their contracts expire sometime down the road, at a time when times will probably be significantly better (and remember, many states, including New York, no longer allow enforcement of non-competes that tie talent down). People don't forget who hurt them, and they rarely stay loyal the moment other possibilities start open, as they eventually, inevitably, will. Today's savings, will ensure tomorrow's struggles.
