KSRF’s New Owners Make Changes One Day at a Time : Radio: The station is working on a new format, playing a different year’s music each day.

Newer oldies every day.

Though this may sound like yet another newfangled radio concept, it is intended simply to intrigue listeners and get them ready for something even newer.

KSRF-FM (103.1), the easy-listening station that was bought by former KROQ-FM owner Ken Roberts last month, began on April 25 to play a varied assortment of songs from decades past. But the station is not just cuing up the usual “oldies but goodies” heard across the dial.

Instead, KSRF is playing music from a different year each day, having started with 1961 on April 25, followed by 1962 on April 26 and so on until it arrives at 1991, on Friday, May 24, when an entirely different format becomes effective.

This is one programming change that is not accompanied by the usual media blitz or promotional fanfare. “We’ve just been kind of letting people find us,” said KSRF program director Freddy Snakeskin, a former program director and deejay at KROQ.

Snakeskin has been raiding his personal collection of 20,000 albums for the current playlist, which includes such varied titles as the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town,” Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” and Abba’s “Fernando.”

“We’re just trying to show where music has been,” Snakeskin said. “There will come a time when we will try to predict where music is going.

“We could have played a clock ticking (until the actual change takes place). We could have played ocean sounds, but people seem to really be responding to this.”

He would not reveal much about the new format--which is expected to be alternative rock or “new music”--except to say that “it’s going to be substantially different from any other station.”

Roberts purchased KSRF and KOCM-FM (an Orange County station assigned to the same frequency) in a package deal last month and intends to simulcast the two stations.

Several of those associated with the station have had affiliations with KROQ. Besides Snakeskin and Roberts, the station’s general manager, John McLaughlin, was sales manager at KROQ in the early ‘80s, and KSRF has hired KROQ deejay Egil Aalvik (“The Swedish Eagle”) to be its music director. KSRF’s midday deejay will be Raechel Donahue, another former KROQ personality.

The morning drive disc jockey, (Big) Ron O’Brien, was a former KIIS deejay. Snakeskin will be on the air during afternoon drive time.

But those who expect a replay of KROQ’s early days may be disappointed. “We’re not going to do KROQ again, but we’ll be using some of the same philosophical approaches to doing something new and different, only for 1991 instead of for 1982, because things change,” Snakeskin said.