• by David Kaplan , January 28, 2005

W. Kenneth Ferree, chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau, said Thursday that he will resign his post effective in early March 2005.

Two weeks ago, Ferree's boss, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, said he too will leave the Commission in March.

In March 2002, the Cable Services Bureau was combined with the Mass Media Bureau, and Ferree was named chief of the newly created Media Bureau. The job is charged with providing legal, policy, and regulatory advice to the FCC Chairman and the other FCC Commissioners on broadcast, cable, broadband, and post-licensing satellite issues.

Ferree, 44, has often come under fire for his vigorous championing of looser ownership rules. (On Wednesday, his FCC colleague Michael Copps denounced such changes before a meeting of the National Association of Television Program Executives in Las Vegas as leading to corrosive waves of consolidation and a concomitant lack of diversity with regard to television programming.)

After the Commission approved the loosening of the media ownership cap, Congress sought to take action to repeal the new rules. Additionally, a federal appeals court last year threw out the portion of the rules that would have allowed greater ownership of television and radio stations in the same market. The court, however, said the FCC was within its rights to repeal a prohibition on a company's owning a newspaper and a television station in the same city.

The White House is expected to drop its challenge to the ownership rules.

Ferree was also seen as the force behind a proposal that would require broadcasters to shift more quickly to digital TV and relinquish $70 billion worth of analog TV airwaves.