Culture buffs, local history aficionados, Bill Bonds’ groupies and older folks looking to relive moments from their childhood have the show of their dreams on Detroit Public Television Monday night: "Detroit Remember When: The History of Detroit TV," a one-hour documentary.

Showtime: 8 p.m.

Bonds, the namesake of a band, T-shirts and, once-upon-a-time, heroin packets --  will join DPTV’s Fred Nahhat live in the studio during the broadcast, along with other surprise guests.  “Detroit Remember When: The History of Detroit TV” is produced by Michael Collins, Ed Golick, Bill Kubota and Tim Kiska. 

Kiska, a professor of history and journalism at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a former reporter at the News and Free Press, is the author of a 2005 book "From Soupy to Nuts! A History of Detroit Television" and co-author with Golick of "Detroit Television," a 2010 paperback in the "Images of America" series from Arcadia Publishing.

Excellent moments in WTVS’s history of Detroit TV, in no special order:

* “Swingin’ Time,” with Robin Seymour, honors Ecorse High on the same show that featured Little Stevie Wonder. The Ecorse cheerleading squad also performed.

 

* Jazz great Ursula Walker appears as a 14-year-old on the “Auntie Dee” show, left, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

* News God Bill Bonds recalls sitting on a Detroit street car during the 1943 riots and witnessing a white mob storm onto the car and take away a black man, who was attempting to hide from the violence.

* The guy behind White Fang and Black Tooth characters on the Soupy Sales show shows how it was done. 

* The first TV broadcast in Detroit: A crowd of people watch -- on one TV set! --.  at the city convention center, their minds blown. The date: March 4, 1947. 

* WWJ-TV, which owned the Detroit News and radio station WWJ-AM, saw television as a vehicle to sell newspapers.

* The documentary's “commercials” are actual commercials from the olden days, such as the Faygo Kid and Mr. Belevdere, who can be reached at TY 87100. “We do good work.”

* The Detroit Film Theatre’s Elliot Wilhelm making the link between longtime movie host Bill Kennedy and TV's Superman. 

* An early Bob Seger looks very young, and wears a Bob Dylan-style hat.

 * Interviews with regular Detroiters on “Bowling for Dollars” is like an oral time capsule.

 * A clip of "American Black Journal" that features a youthful Ron Scott, the anti-police-violence activist, with a man who looks like a young Rev. Wendell Anthony in the first row of the audience.

 * Detroit’s three TV stations once had three All-Star sportscasters at the same time: Ray Lane, Al Ackerman and Dave Diles.