The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
"WWAC must change from its current rock-music format because the number of listeners has been declining, even though the population in our listening area has been growing. The population growth has resulted mainly from people moving to our area after their retirement, and we must make listeners of these new residents. But they seem to have limited interest in music: several local stores selling recorded music have recently closed. Therefore, just changing to another kind of music is not going to increase our audience. Instead, we should adopt a news-and-talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The presented memorandum claims that the WWAC radio station should adopt new strategies to increase its number of listeners. Among them there are several proposals, such as changing music genre and delivering a new program format in order to turn the people who have recently moved in the area into listeners. However, as convincing as it may sound, this note fails to answer to some relevant questions which would help to outline the best strategy.
First, why changing the current rock-music format? This does not relate to the fact that the number of listeners has decreased. Moreover, the number of listeners in the area shows an opposite tendency and it should raise doubts about the decision of switching to a different genre. Did the managers of WWAC think about surveying people’s music tastes? They could find out rock-music is not the main problem and that maybe it is enjoyed by listeners. Therefore, the first assumption made in the memorandum is not grounded by any convincing evidence.
Second, if the willingness of the author to make new listeners out of the people moved in the area may be interesting, concluding they are not interested in music due to the closing of local stores shows a lack of understanding of the present time. I do not see how shops closing could be linked to the disinterest in music of retired people. In fact, the author does not ask himself if these people may have brought their recorded music and do not want to buy other CDs. Or, more probably, he is not informed about the habits and preferences of the people regarding how to buy music. It is some kind of myopic thinking that nowadays people do not buy and listen to music online, relying on streaming services. Stores could have closed because of the advent of new technologies, but they have not been asked about the reasons of interruption of their business; the author made once more an assumption supported by no evidence or data.
Third, would the news-and-talk format be successful without knowing what the audience is expecting or would like to listen to? Again, the author’s confidence about the success of that kind of format is unmotivated, or at least it is not proved by any concrete data. Additionally, the last sentence directly conflicts with the first one. In fact, in the first part of the memorandum rock-music format is said to be popular in the area, while in the last part it seems that a news-and-talk format would be preferred. By the lacking of clarity, we can easily deduce that the author has not a definite and precise idea of the audience’s taste.
To sum up, even though the presented ideas could be potentially applicable and advantageous for WWAC, they should be developed and detailed according to the aforementioned questions, which could help to evaluate the effectiveness of the claims in the memorandum. The author seems to neglect several aspects of the listeners’ inclinations, while his strategy should be based on firstly acknowledging what new listeners would expect and prefer by WWAC.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 514 350
No. of Characters: 2463 1500
No. of Different Words: 248 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.761 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.792 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.688 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.364 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.604 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.516 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, may, moreover, regarding, second, so, therefore, third, while, at least, in fact, kind of, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 80.0 55.5748502994 144% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2555.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 514.0 441.139720559 117% => OK
Chars per words: 4.97081712062 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.76146701107 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8592266022 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 255.0 204.123752495 125% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.496108949416 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 781.2 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.7735844872 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.666666667 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4761904762 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.80952380952 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.225023400732 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0690639171993 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0526883321848 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.129890060248 0.128457276422 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0497346988194 0.0628817314937 79% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.64 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 124.0 98.500998004 126% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.