After the second game in last Sunday night’s NBA Finals doubleheader on TNT, just as the post-game show opened and the studio camera swooped in on the desk, anchor Ernie Johnson did something that we think every local TV newscast should do more of. He began the program by saying, “Welcome to the Inside the NBA postgame show. It’s 11:13 here on the East Coast from Studio J in Atlanta…” He would then introduce his desk mates, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley. And they were off and running.

The fact is that TNT’s “Inside the NBA” studio show is one of the best sports television productions on the air (We’re willing to fight with anyone who disagrees.) Local TV newscasts might study the program to learn some key ingredients to making great television (more on that shortly). But we would like to point out that the simple gesture of announcing what the time was is more important now than ever.

Why the big deal about announcing the time? What did Ernie Johnson accomplish by glancing at his watch and telling us what time it was at the show’s beginning? Several things, actually. He acknowledged that it was a late hour and that the studio crew had been on the air for two complete games. For another, he communicated that this was happening live, right in the moment, without having to use the cliche of saying “we’re live (on television) right now.” And given the freewheeling reputation of this particular program, he subtly signalled the audience that anything might be said in the moments to come about the results of the game where the Golden State Warriors had defeated the Houston Rockets in a deciding game 7 of the first round of the playoffs.

In this day and age, too much television is prepackaged and predictable. Even local TV news suffers from this problem. The fact that some stations are now routinely “pre-recording” either portions of or an entire newscast is pretty inconceivable to us, especially after years of having to put the words “Live, Local, Latebreaking” into newscast copy. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a talk radio station nearby that produces its own programming (rather than just taking various national talking heads off a satellite feed). The chances are good that they remind you that they are “Live and local” regularly.

Along with telling you what time it is.

The act of telling someone what time it is means that you are sharing that particular moment in time in that specific location. Right here and right now.

“Time checks,” as broadcast slang labels them, don’t go along with pre-recorded content. It also doesn’t really work for national broadcasts, because four time zones are watching, and there is the “west coast feed,” which is recorded and delayed in playback at the right time. “The Today Show,” the progenitor of all morning newscasts on TV, got around this back in the black and white days by announcing how many minutes it might be “after the hour” while never announcing the hour.

Local Morning newscasts have gotten the message over the years that their audience may be listening more than watching, so delivering time and temperature information in each block has become standard fare. We’d argue that practice should spread to all other newscasts throughout the day.

Local TV news got away from this when we introduced the time and temperature displays to the screen back in the 1980s. Late newscasts, in some misguided effort to get people to stay up, often would drop the time from the on-screen “bug” as it was known. That fooled so many people. (Not really.) Then there was the backlash against what was criticized as “Happy talk news,” which led to some stations trying to do away with any interaction between the people seen during the newscasts.

We’re also fans here of the simple but powerful idea of stating the date at the top of newscasts. After all, the newscast is a living journal of what has (or will) happen on that particular date. Again, the Today show featured this idea in its earliest days. (However, the program also featured a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs as part of the regular cast each morning, so not every idea the show had was necessarily great.)

But characters on a television program matter. One of the reasons why TNT’s “Inside The NBA” studio show with Ernie, Kenny, Charles, and Shaq is truly “Must See TV” is because all four members of the studio cast are characters. They know the game and can break it down for the audience. But the interactions between these grown men are informative and, dare we say it, entertaining.

If you are wondering why we would talk about being entertaining in local TV news, the answer is that, in addition to covering the news of the day, which is often not a buffet of happy or positive stories, there needs to be something that gives viewers something to smile about. One thing that can do that while simultaneously creating a unique identity for one newscast over another is having characters in the cast.

For nearly four decades, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles had a pair of characters in its evening newscasts with weatherman Fritz Coleman and sportscaster Fred Roggin. The interaction between the two during newscasts was genuinely entertaining, and the station would brilliantly promote the pair in a long-running series of funny station promotions featuring “Fritz and Fred.” The competition between the sports jock and the weather nerd was an extension of the pair’s on-air banter that would be similar to what you are likely to hear between the foursome in the studio for TNT’s basketball coverage.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TNT will not have NBA games after this season, so the future of the “Inside The NBA” team is uncertain as we write this. It would be a shame if those four weren’t given a new home, aside from the studio work for the NCAA Tournament weekends, which Ernie, Kenny, and Charles have been a part of since 2011. We really hope that their time together isn’t over.

Do note that we are not suggesting that every local TV newscast become the equivalent of “open mike night” at the local comedy club. But there is real value in having the people who bring you the news each day be more than just “news readers” as European outlets have referred to their anchors over the years. Being genuine and yes, occasionally even human, isn’t something to banish from the studio. It should be as “organic” as possible, and certainly not overdone. News Directors must monitor this kind of on-air interaction carefully to ensure the goal of helping the newscast is met. The value of an outside talent coach can also benefit this effort.

All we are saying is that it might be time to examine the persona of your newscast and develop the personalities of the people who appear in it.

And from time to time, please have them tell us what time it is.