Trivia / Hot Seat with Wally George

• Dueling Shows: With Morton Downey Jr., who hosted a very similar show from 1987 to 1989. Morton appeared on Hot Seat at least once, in 1984, arguing with Wally over who the better conservative was.
  • Wally did eulogize Morton shortly after his death in 2001, although he did still bitterly note that the Downey family refused to acknowledge Wally's help and influence on Morton's career.
• Edited for Syndication: Reruns that aired after the show ended would have a new intro and credits, with a new theme song dubbed over the original. By the late 90s, the reruns would remove the commentary, audience questions, and ticket plug, basically boiling the show down to just Wally grilling his guests. To fill out the runtime, clips from other episodes (deemed "Golden Oldies") were added in. At least two episodes circulate in this form, from circa 2000 airings.
  • The 2020-2021 reruns would air the show as it originally appeared, albeit with the top and bottom of the picture cropped to simulate widescreen. Also, the addresses and phone numbers during the plugs were blurred out…but not muted in any way, meaning you could still hear Wally and the audience recite the world-famous phone numbers.
• Follow the Leader: Numerous trashy talk shows would follow throughout the 80s and 90s, with similar formats to Hot Seat. Wally was quick to call out hosts who used this style, calling them "copycat combat". The aforementioned Morton Downey Jr. was a frequent target. (Although given Wally’s tendency to exaggerate everything, it’s not known how much of his rancor towards them was an act.)
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: KDOC did not have the budget to archive all of the shows, so the vast majority of the run was erased. Out of almost 500 episodes, roughly 70 are known to survive today in full. KDOC reran what they had preserved from 2020-2021, while clips from other episodes are plentiful on YouTube.
• Milestone Celebration: Wally always celebrated the anniversary of Hot Seat's debut with special shows, including memorable clips.
• No Budget: Comes with being made in a tiny local station. The set was miniscule, and the audience could only seat roughly 80 people. (Although they certainly had enough energy to fill a stadium!) Unfortunately, the lack of budget carried over to archiving the shows...KDOC simply couldn't save them all, and most were recorded over.
• Replaced the Theme Tune: Hot Seat went through four theme songs in its original run. It started out with a currently unidentified news-like theme, which was replaced by "Eyewitness News" by Craig Palmer sometime around April 1984. That tune was replaced in 1985 with "World In Action" by John Coleman, by far its most famous theme, then a final one was introduced with a new intro & graphics package around the summer of 1992. Early-00s reruns dubbed yet another new theme song in; "Techno 1" by Robert Etoll.