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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The business manager of television news station strongly believes that by restoring time devoted to weather and local news, revenues from advertising would increase.There are a lot of assumptions and claims drawn by not-so reliable means and the following passages shall elucidate as to why these assumptions do not stand well.
Firstly, the business manager has decided to take into account the complaints from viewers only in the past year. There may be several other complaints based on the quality of the news content being broadcasted which the manager seems to have ignored. For example, if the complaints have been steadily increasing over several years and if the surge of complaints in the last year were only linked to the increased coverage of national news, then an increased coverage of local news and weather would do very little to attact more viewers as there could be several factors for a drop in revenue.
Secondly, the locations from where most of the complaints came from should also be taken into consideration. For instance, regions which experience inclement weather conditions and are prone to hurricanes, would naturally prefer greater coverage on weather. However, places with mostly mild weather conditions would not care much about the decreased coverage. As explained in the previous paragraph, there may have other complaints from such places which the business manager may have ignored such as a drop in quality of national news content that is being broadcasted.
Thirdly, local businesses would love to be able to advertise to a larger audience, as it would aid in making their brand or business known to a greater number of people. If they resorted to canceling their advertising contracts, right after the news program switched to airing national news, then there could be others detrimental factors in play. For instance, the late-night news program, beleiving that they now cater to a larger audience, might have drastically increased their advertising charges, causing local businesses to cancel their contracts. The televsion station might have also given a partial preference towards very popular brands hoping they would rake in greater advertising revenues, this would have led the local businesses to find cost effective alternatives. In such a scenario, increasing coverage to local news and weather would not significantly allow the newstation to reap profits.
In order to make an informed decision, the news station would have to take several factors into consideration such as the nature of complaints, the location from where these complaints arose, the opinions of local businesses as to their preferred advertsing methods etc. before making the necessary changes to increase their advertising revenues.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 435 350
No. of Characters: 2280 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.567 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.241 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 144 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.071 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.921 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.929 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.382 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.617 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 48, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...iness manager of television news station strongly believes that by restoring time...
^^
Line 1, column 167, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: There
...evenues from advertising would increase.There are a lot of assumptions and claims dra...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, well, as to, for example, for instance, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2341.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39400921659 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77962040202 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.493087557604 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 715.5 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 78.5704496332 57.8364921388 136% => OK
Chars per sentence: 156.066666667 119.503703932 131% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.9333333333 23.324526521 124% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.73333333333 5.70786347227 153% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.3062834581 0.218282227539 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.106494341285 0.0743258471296 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0655936356706 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179028576517 0.128457276422 139% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0630986411691 0.0628817314937 100% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.4 14.3799401198 128% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.57 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.85 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => 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.