Now the perspective of a younger generation can be heard in the Roaring Fork Valley, thanks to Radio CMC (radioCMC.com; 102.7 FM from Aspen to Snowmass Canyon, 93.9 FM in Glenwood Springs), a for-profit college station developed as part of the Isaacson School of New Media at Colorado Mountain College.

Local multimedia guru Corby Anderson, who recently worked both the X Games in Aspen and the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Vail, teaches Radio Programming at CMC every fall and serves as the station’s faculty advisor. His hope was to mold the program after the high school station in Concord, California, that inspired his own twenty-year career in radio and television broadcasting.

“Radio CMC is a professional training ground where students can get real, on-air experience,” Anderson says. They can also express their personalities—refreshing in an era when Pandora-style automated playlists increasingly dominate the airwaves. (Though in this valley, with Aspen Public Radio and Carbondale’s KDNK, that is thankfully much less the case.) “Any student can play any type of music they wish, and we encourage that diversity,” Anderson says. “We have everything from indie rock and country to Indian drums, but we also have talk shows, breaking news, special features, and poetry readings. As long as it connects with the audience and speaks to the community, we want it to be on the air.”

The program launched in 2012 and had its first class of graduates last fall. “I have no doubt some of those students are going to be great professionals in media,” Anderson says. Add that to Radio CMC’s appeal: you can listen to the future.