18. The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The business manager contends that the television station should expand their news coverage on weather and local news to allure more viewers and to avoid the decrease in the advertising revenues. Even though this argument seems convincing at first, the unwarranted assumptions on which the argument is based lead me to doubt the credibility of it.
First of all, the manager adamantly assumes that the current news format have had a detrimental effect on the late-night news program’s. He uses the complaints the station received from viewers to support his assumption. However, it is highly likely that the complaints are not significantly much enough to indicate the opinion of the public. The number of complaints could be small relative to the all the watchers of the late-night news. In this case, seemingly high proportion of complaints that deals with the current news style would not be a serious problem. Also, the exact rate of viewership or amount of the advertisement revenues are not suggested. Without the exact statistics about the late-night news’ popularity, the author should not rashly assumes that the current way of news have had an adverse effect on the program.
Second, the author implicitly believes that the local businesses cancelled the advertisement contract because of the news’ focus on national news and it would damage the revenue of the station. However, there is no certain evidence to support his assumption. It is plausible that the local economy is in downturn, making hard for the local companies to invest money on advertisement. Furthermore, even if the author’s assumption is true, there is another likelihood that instead of local companies, the national-scale companies made a contract to advertise after the late-night news. In this case, the revenues from new clients could override those of local clients.
Finally, the author irrationally assumes that the change of the news’ focus would reap benefit to all the news programs of the station. However, there is a high probability that the change of the format could further aggravate the situation. The current viewers could opt for not viewing the changed news format, making the revenues of the station plummet. Also, the late-night news program should not be generalized as the all the news program because the characteristic could be different.
All in all, the memorandum is rife with groundless assumptions. Therefore, the manager should consider the aforementioned assumptions to bolster the argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 399 350
No. of Characters: 2061 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.469 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.165 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.821 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.145 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.568 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 767, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'should' requires base form of the verb: 'assume'
Suggestion: assume
...opularity, the author should not rashly assumes that the current way of news have had a...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, second, so, therefore, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2146.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 399.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.37844611529 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46933824581 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97721786778 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 188.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.471177944862 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 653.4 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.0621861058 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.3 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.95 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.15 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.327379156367 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.100823816959 0.0743258471296 136% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0858669788267 0.0701772020484 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179572964171 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0701056311237 0.0628817314937 111% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.92 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.