The atmosphere has changed at the CBC. The hallways still have that alienated Kafkaesque look to them, but if you walk into the edit suites and some of the offices, there is a renewed confidence and excitement in the air.

‘We are a creative organization.’ comments CBC president Robert Rabinovitch, ‘and it comes from our people.’ It’s becoming clear to the staff that Rabinovitch and his executive team are committed to bringing forward a new generation of creative talent at the CBC.

Innovators are being encouraged to work on new shows, the most intriguing of which is ZeD, the late-night performance series that began broadcasting with little fanfare in the late spring.

‘ZeD is experimental,’ points out Rabinovitch. ‘It’s a chance to be far out. Some of the ideas are going to work. A lot of them will bomb. But it’s a chance to experiment with the use of the medium, giving young people an opportunity to do different things. And I see it integrally related with what we’re doing on Radio 3. It’s not an accident that both of them are in the same city and they can work together.’

That city is Vancouver. Rae Hull is the regional director there and the executive in charge of production for ZeD. As one of the top management voices, she participated in the discussions that led to the launching of ZeD. ‘We wanted to create a kind of a multiplatform launch pad for emerging artistic talent,’ she says, before breaking her pen and spilling ink over her hand.

Quickly recovering, she ponders the convergence of new media, radio and performance that is at the heart of the ZeD experience. ‘What you see on ZeD is what ultimately occurred. We’ve got an hour-long TV platform that has, at its foundation, a mix of short films by emerging filmmakers and performances by artists, dancers, musicians and others. As well, there’s all of this really interesting interaction and contribution from the audience via our website.’

Mark Hyland, who heads up broadband digital services at the CBC, has been closely involved in the creation of ZeD’s website. It’s an elaborate construction, certainly the most complex of the ones devoted to program descriptions on cbc.ca.

Hyland and Hull are banking on appealing to savvy young Canadians who have a DIY (do it yourself) attitude and know how to use Flash for animation and DV cameras for their shoots. They expect to see three kinds of respondents to the ZeD site. Some will want more information, others will want to criticize, but the third group will ‘want to get involved and submit something today and see it tomorrow,’ says Hyland. ‘That’s really become the vision for the show.’

Evan Solomon, the host of Hot Type and cohost of CBC News: Sunday, used to work on Shift magazine with Hyland. While he’s found some parts of ZeD to be ‘terrible, I love the idea of the show. I love the Web idea of it and I love that the CBC has blown its doors open to people.’

Rabinovitch is a great supporter of the young, articulate broadcaster. ‘Remember Evan Solomon started on Newsworld,’ he points out. ‘That’s our training ground. CBC News: Sunday is a big step up for him. We want to bring along some other people [like Solomon]. They will be our new employees. They will be the creative group that we desperately need.’

Solomon is pleased to be working for Hot Type and CBC News: Sunday. ‘It is not a forced alliance; it’s not one of these unholy bedmates that we see in Canadian politics. We actually get along in the sense that the interview styles are similar. Sunday’s mandate is politics, media, culture and spirituality, all of which appears in this broad, magazine-style show.’

The program moves from telling insightful stories on major events to examining how those very tales are presented through the media. Stories from the past are revisited, allowing for the genuine power of a situation to be played out naturally.

Sunday offers long, intelligent interviews as does Hot Type, Solomon’s highly regarded literary show. For both, says Solomon, ‘we can interview someone for about an hour and cut it down to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it warrants. So you get a really bigger picture and can discover the ideas that underpin the conversation.’

Although Solomon supports the use of new technologies, he is most interested in in-depth profiles and interviews with people. He always cuts out the first 10 minutes of an interview ‘because it’s all lies or promotion.’ Like all good journalists, he wants to find the truth, the ‘heart of the matter.’

Solomon’s mentor is Patrick Watson, who is also ‘my harshest critic.’ That these two mavericks have found so much to talk about suggests that the old verites are as important as the new technologies when you’re a thoughtful member of the new generation.