IA Radio: 'The Round Guy' Is Fired From Country KBOE

Steve Pilchin

Steve "The Round Guy" Pilchen is off the air again. This time he says it's permanent.

Pilchen returned to central Iowa airwaves in January 2016 at Country KBOE 104.9 FM  in Oskaloosa, Iowa. The station fired him March 29.

Pilchen is 64 and turns 65 in November. He hopes to find work to make ends meet until he turns 65, when he qualifies for Medicare.

But, sadly for central Iowa listeners, his next stop will not be on any radio dial.

"I'm looking for a job, but not a radio job," Pilchen told the Des Moines Register. "I've had enough. It's a tough, vicious business, and I don't feel like being stabbed in the back again."

The Round Guy is best-known to scores of central Iowa radio listeners for his decade-long association with Larry Morgan and Lou Sipolt on the top radio morning show "Lou & Larry" on KGGO-FM in Des Moines from 1991 to 2011.

Pilchen was the show's designated clown about town.

When Morgan left KGGO to focus on sports broadcasting and advertising sales, the Round Guy joined the show as a permanent fixture.

Sipolt and Pilchen were later joined by Heather Burnside.

The media conglomerate Cumulus Broadcasting bought KGGO in September 2011. In December, they fired Pilchen and pushed aside Sipolt and Burnside, who both later left the company.

But Pilchen was the odd man out.

He couldn't catch on at any of the stations in Des Moines. He found it more difficult to get comedy gigs, the genre where his media star began to rise nearly 40 years ago.