John Dean will be remembered as perhaps the foremost “whistle-blower” during the Watergate hearings in the early seventies; but perhaps a more durable legacy was his introduction into the vernacular of the phrase point in time. He must have used it hundreds of times, and it stuck. Somehow people seem to feel it has an erudite ring to it. In fact, it is one of those redundancies that the concept of time seems to engender.
Newsmen cannot resist saying “in that time period” or “in that period of time”. (as opposed to what, a period of grapefruits?) Not quite as common but also heard frequently is “in that moment in time”.
By deleting “time” (and of course the accompanying prepositions) from each of these phrases, you have not altered the meaning, but you have strengthened your prose. Spare is better!
– Ken Butera