The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station."To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth i

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The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.

"To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

The above argument is a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station. As mentioned by the manager, the number of listeners is declining and concludes that it is because of the current rock-music format. This might be true as people now prefer variety and look for constant change. But the proposals made to improve the number of listeners does not fall into place.

Well there might be multiple reasons for the listener number declining. May be they were bored of the same genre of music being played, there might have been many ad breaks which would take away the interest from the listeners, may be the Radio Jockeys did not conduct any interactive programs which would make the listeners feel that they were a part of the show. To present these details, it would have been helpful if the demographic details of the area had been provided. This would facilitate in knowing the various categories of people who are staying in the area.

As mentioned in the argument, the number of people moving there after retirement was increasing. It is also possible that, some of the people are relocating to a different area and they happened to be frequent listeners. Also, were the people moving in aware of the radio station? Are they interested in listening to radio? Some of them might not prefer listening to recorded music and prefer watching it over TV or just listening to radio or have other means through which they can listen to music. Without knowing these details, it is not right to make claims that people have lost interest in music. Without proper evidence about the declining of local sales, the radio station cannot base its proposal.

The manager suggests to change to a news and talk format which would increase the number of listeners. Instead of jumping into conclusions, it would be better to conduct a survey which would include details like the genre of music that people would like to hear, whether they would like to have some interactive programs on radio, are they interested in listening to news and talk shows on radio. These details would help in knowing the interests among the people and would prove to be beneficiary to the radio station in increasing the number of listeners.

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No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
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Word Length SD: 2.348 2.4
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Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.473 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.389 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.514 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
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