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 arguement from the business manager is to restore time devoted to weather and local news to its former level in order to attract more viewers to the program and avoid losing any further advertising revenues. However, the manager fails to certain key metrics which indicate underlying correlation between viewership, advertisement revenue, and time allocation for weather and local news. While the manager identifies a general relationship between the various factors, he or she has no mention of the quality of the late-night news program presented to the audience. Additionally, the complaints from viewers have no mention of wanting further screen time for weather and local news. Finally, there may be other reasons to local business cancelling their advertising contracts that are not related to the television staton.
The late-night news program may be performing poorly as of late due to its quality of work, rather than the time quantity allocation of what is being presented. The program may perhaps be late in presenting stories to the public, and as such, are losing viewership because of this. Furthermore, the program may be sharing news that are less exciting or groundbreaking. Because of this, viewers are switching to other alternative news stations. If the quality of work is similar with weather and local news, the manager may not see major improvements in its viewership by restoring the time devoted to its former level.
The complaints from viewers have no mention of wanting greater screen time from weather and local news. It could be possible that the news reporter for national news is seen as less engaging as the reporter from weather or local news. As such, restoring the time devoted to weather and local news wouldn't alleviate the underlying issue of this phenomenon. The order in which the topics are presented may also be another reason as to why viewers were concerned with the station's coverage. The audience may be more interested in wanting to hear about next day's weather rather than following national news. As as result, if the weather reportings are presented later on in the show, many viewers may be unable to stay awake that late in order to hear about the weather. It can be very possible that viewers simply would like to know about the weather and local news earlier on in the evening.
Finally, local businesses may be cancelling advertising contracts for reasons that are unrelated to the performance of the television station. Given the high turnover rates of many local businesses, the decision to cancel advertisement contracts may simply be due to cut necessary expenses in order to keep their operations still running. Additionally, their return of investment may no longer be as high as it was initially when they first received exposure from the station. After a certain period of time, there is no longer a need to promote and market their business as their presence has already reached out to many of the public. For these reasons, businesses may be cutting costs regardless of if the station decides to devote more time to weather and local news.
The manager was able to highlight a key correlation between viewership, revenue and time for weather and local news. However, it is important to note that correlation does not equate to causation. The reasons behind this epidemic can very well be attributed to quality of news captured, presentation of the news delivered and local business decisions unrelated to televesion performance.
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: 25 15
No. of Words: 576 350
No. of Characters: 2875 1500
No. of Different Words: 225 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.899 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.991 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.683 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 185 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.04 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.2 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.64 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.358 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.53 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.118 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 174, Rule ID: MIGHT_PERHAPS[1]
Message: Use simply 'may', 'perhaps'.
Suggestion: may; perhaps
...of what is being presented. The program may perhaps be late in presenting stories to the pu...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 298, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: wouldn't
... time devoted to weather and local news wouldnt alleviate the underlying issue of this ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 470, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
... to why viewers were concerned with the stations coverage. The audience may be more inte...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 605, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: As
...er rather than following national news. As as result, if the weather reportings are p...
^^^^^
Line 13, column 494, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...osure from the station. After a certain period of time, there is no longer a need to promote a...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, well, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 81.0 55.5748502994 146% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2945.0 2260.96107784 130% => OK
No of words: 575.0 441.139720559 130% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12173913043 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.89685180668 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7518594504 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 235.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.408695652174 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 922.5 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 35.3922929463 57.8364921388 61% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.8 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.48 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.406138241188 0.218282227539 186% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.145699737163 0.0743258471296 196% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0871151933819 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.269563900531 0.128457276422 210% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0594976336833 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.05 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.