FCC Official in Media Hot Seat

The man who is helping to shape the future of television rarely watches it.

His decisions on high-speed Internet access will affect millions, but he’d rather play classical piano than surf the Web and he has never downloaded a tune.

He’s a top media industry watchdog but by no means a news junkie, only scanning Washington newspapers and skipping CNN most days.

Despite such seeming contradictions, W. Kenneth Ferree--chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s media bureau--could have more to say about how Americans are entertained and informed in the coming years than just about any other government official aside from his boss, FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell.

As head of the media bureau, Ferree’s responsibilities include overseeing the roll-out across the U.S. of high-speed Internet service and digital television, the reshaping of media-ownership rules that could spur more mergers among cable, broadcast and newspaper companies, and the approval or rejection of giant media deals, such as the proposed mergers between Comcast Corp. and AT&T; Broadband and between EchoStar Communications Corp. and Hughes Electronics Corp., which owns DirecTV.

“He’s like the fifth FCC commissioner,” quipped one industry official. Ferree, 41, dismisses such characterizations. “I’m just a worker bee,” he insisted.

But Powell confirmed that Ferree--whom he met while they were both students at Georgetown University law school in the early 1990s--has become a powerful voice at the agency. “He’s going to have a huge stamp on some things that are on the way,” the chairman said.

By next year Powell has promised to release a sweeping review of decades-old media rules, ranging from national limits on TV and cable ownership to rules that prevent a company from owning newspaper and broadcast TV outlets in the same city. (Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, is pushing to eliminate those rules.)

Ferree declined to comment on issues pending before the commission. But his past comments and writings indicate he shares Powell’s faith in free markets, deregulation and competition.

He favors a hands-off approach to the Internet and is no fan of cable-rate regulation. Before taking his post, Ferree suggested that the FCC should eventually abandon oversight of cable, as satellite TV and other alternative technologies provide greater competition. Such views probably will weigh heavily on his decision--expected later this year--on a rule prohibiting a cable company from reaching more than 30% of the national pay-TV audience. A federal appeals court has thrown out that cap.

Another key issue for the FCC is whether media consolidation reduces the diversity of programming on TV, but Ferree--who recently started forcing himself to watch more TV--said he has been astounded by the amount and variety of programming.

“I never paid attention to cable until I got this job,” he said. “There’s more good stuff out there than I thought there was. What I remember of TV is ‘Three’s Company’ and ‘Hogan’s Heroes.’ ”

Forecasting what Ferree will decide, however, is risky. He has built a career on nonconformity and unpredictability.

A former football lineman at Dartmouth College who never made academics a top priority, he surprised himself by acing law school and graduating near the top of his class.

He married an undercover police officer and is eager to be seen as a tough enforcer, but Ferree once rushed to help the American Civil Liberties Union free a Virginia motorist arrested for interfering with a roadside sobriety checkpoint.

He’s a hulking, 6-foot-6 figure who hunts, shoots, flies airplanes and rides a motorcycle to work every day, but he also dabbles in poetry (he sometimes writes his e-mails in verse) and has been known to sneak off during lunch to visit his kids.

“He’s a little Baby Huey sometimes,” Powell said in an interview. “Ken definitely has these eccentricities, which I think he enjoys very much.”

Apparently, Powell enjoys them too. When the son of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was named FCC chairman in early 2001, Ferree was his first major appointment.

At the time, Ferree was a relatively unknown telecommunications attorney, representing cable and satellite interests at a boutique Washington law firm. But Ferree has quickly won over many in the industry with his no-nonsense style and charisma.

“He tells you what he’s actually thinking,” said Walt Disney Co. lobbyist Preston Padden. “He’s not in anybody’s pocket.”

Ferree’s law school ties with Powell have provided him with an extra aura of power.

“When you are interacting with Ken, you know he has the support of the chairman,” said Robert Sachs, head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. “If Ken were to make a contrary recommendation, it would be a high hurdle to overcome.”

At the stuffy government agency, Ferree has made a splash. He favors wearing loud Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mouse ties, a habit he picked up while working as a salesman and looking for ways to distinguish himself.

At the FCC’s annual fund-raising fashion show, Ferree showed up in full motorcycle leathers, which he sometimes dons for his daily commute.

“He’s a free spirit,” said attorney Henry Goldberg, his former boss at Goldberg, Godles, Wiener & Wright, who frequently had to needle Ferree to change into a business suit before clients arrived.

Impatient and intolerant of anything he considers to be “spin,” Ferree frequently cuts off conversations with a curt “Get to the point.” On occasion, he has stormed out of meetings with industry lobbyists.

But he clearly encourages and relishes his reputation as the FCC’s “bad cop,” a term he uses to describe himself.

Role as Enforcer

Recently, Powell unveiled a plan to encourage cable, broadcast and electronics industries to roll out digital TV. Though the chairman calls the plan “voluntary,” Ferree left little doubt that he expected the industries to adopt it, referring to himself as “the stick.”

It’s a role reminiscent of his high school days, he said, when his basketball coach sent the imposing young athlete onto the court to “basically foul the other team and rough them up.... I was the enforcer.”

But two FCC commissioners recently took a slap at Ferree’s tough-guy image, saying he was too soft in one of his first major decisions involving satellite giant EchoStar.

Ferree’s bureau determined this spring that EchoStar’s controversial practice of requiring customers to install two dishes to receive all local TV channels was a form of price discrimination requiring consumers to spend their time waiting for a new dish to be installed.

FCC Commissioners Kevin Martin, a Republican, and Michael Copps, a Democrat, criticized Ferree for allowing EchoStar to continue the two-dish plan merely by providing better notice to customers.

“Such a ‘remedy’ effectively eviscerates the finding that EchoStar’s current policy is unlawful,” the commissioners wrote.

The ruling is under review. Ferree said he went as far as the law permitted.

Ferree hasn’t lost any support from Powell.

“He’s very blunt, which I like,” said Powell, who said he often enjoys watching Ferree dress down lobbyists. “It can be brutal. He picks [their argument] apart and throws the pieces back in their lap. And they sit there not knowing what to say next.”

Despite an obvious mutual affinity, Powell and Ferree insist their closeness has been exaggerated. Though they both attended Georgetown, Ferree was a year ahead of Powell. They both clerked for federal Judge Harry Edwards in Washington, though during different years. Until they met through a mutual friend years after graduation, the pair had barely spoken. Even now, though they speak frequently at work, they rarely see each other outside of the office, and their families don’t socialize.

Some call them intellectual soul mates. Because of their similar interests, Powell and Ferree acknowledge they have a tendency to get sidetracked into long-winded debates about law and policy.

Career Sea Change

A native of St. Louis, Ferree grew up in a middle-class family in Northern California. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he married his college sweetheart and tried his hand at importing Mexican clothing. When that failed, he earned an MBA from San Jose State University and then worked as a salesman.

His interest in law began by accident. After his first wife got into a car accident, Ferree noticed that her attorney in the case “seemed to be helping people and drove a nice car, a Jag.”

He found he had a knack for law. He got straight A’s during his first year and graduated “second or third” in his class. During that time, he divorced and met Laura, a former police officer who was getting her law degree. Married in 1993, the couple live in Vienna, Va., with their two children.

As a law clerk for Edwards, Ferree became known as “the Lawnmower” for his ability to plow through research like a machine and still leave each night by 6 p.m. to get home to his wife.

“He was very tenacious on big projects that required a huge amount of work,” said Edwards, who officiated at Ferree’s Quaker-style wedding.

It was during his stint with Edwards, an appellate judge who hears many FCC-related cases, that Ferree got his first taste of telecommunications law.

A Republican, Ferree said he also has a strong libertarian bent. In his first year as a lawyer, Ferree volunteered to defend a Virginia motorist who was so outraged after encountering a roadside sobriety checkpoint that he turned his car around and hung a crude sign warning oncoming drivers. A police officer arrested the man for alleged obstruction of justice.

Ferree took the case for free.

“I still think sobriety checkpoints are unconstitutional,” Ferree said. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court doesn’t agree with me.”

But Ferree won this particular case on constitutional grounds, likening the motorist to a modern-day Paul Revere.

“It was pure 1st Amendment. It was people telling each other what their government was doing.”

The issues Ferree faces at the FCC are more complicated. But he still vows to search for what he believes is the right answer, even if the outcome is unpopular.

“One of the things I like about public service is you try to get to the right answers and not necessarily advocate the particular client’s viewpoint,” Ferree said.