Interviews and Talk Shows
During the 1980s and 1990s, Bonds hosted an interview segment on the 5 p.m. news called "Up Front," in which he confronted newsmakers with tough questions. One of his frequent targets was longtime Detroit Mayor Coleman Young; their sparring matches were the stuff of local legend (including a fistfight challenge given by Bonds to Young in July of 1989). The segment was unique in that it would often feature national newsmakers interviewed by Bonds via satellite. (Perhaps the most famous incident came in 1991 when Utah Senator Orrin Hatch stormed off set during an especially heated line of questioning by Bonds.)
In 1989, he launched "Bonds On," a primetime talk format show in which he interviewed everyone from presidents (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) to Michigan governors (Jim Blanchard and John Engler) to auto executives (Lee Iacocca, William Clay Ford and Roger Smith) to sports figures (Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson and Detroit Pistons player Joe Dumars).
In 1991, Bonds participated in the nationally-televised town hall meeting for Democratic presidential candidates Clinton, Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas.
Bonds joined rival WJBK-TV as host of an 11 p.m. talk show, Bonds Tonight on WJBK-TV and also anchored newscasts. He would return to WXYZ for several months in 1999 to read editorials, but left to lend his voice to radio and TV commercials, most notably the Detroit furniture company Gardner White.
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Famous quotes containing the words interviews, talk and/or shows:
“What a perpetual disappointment is actual society, even of the virtuous and gifted! After interviews have been compassed with long foresight, we must be tormented presently by baffled blows, by sudden, unseasonable apathies, by epilepsies of wit and of animal spirits, in the heyday of friendship and thought. Our faculties do not play us true, and both parties are relieved by solitude.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“...I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.”
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943)
“When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who alone suffers, suffers most i’ the mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind.
But then the mind much sufferance doth o’er skip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)