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 is needed to evaluate the
argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
<span style="font-size: 19.36px;">The present argument seems coherent and plausible at first glance; however, further inspection would dictate that the business manager is making inferences off of inconclusive data.
For starters, the manager talks about the tangible complaints that he has received-- what he fails to mention or analyze is the target audience which likes the incorporation of national news with less attention to weather. People are only prone to call and voice their complaints, it is much more of a rarer occurence that a viewer will phone in to simply tell the business manager he is pleased with the change.
This also brings us into the operationlization of what the manager deems as success. If it is viewer count, he must ask himself what is the timeline that he is judging his station's preformance by. Is one year enough to conclude that TV station has failed to build a broader audience?
The same may also be said with advertising revenues; that is, could reverting from national to local news restrict the possibility of building bigger advertising contracts from businesses that prefer a national audience? Would this prove to produce a more lucrative advertising revenue in the long run? Indirectly, if he reverts back to restricting the late-night news program to only local news, he may be hindering the potential to make additional revenue.
In line with the advertising revenues, the business manager also makes the claim that local businesses are cancelling their advertising contracts because of the increased time to national news and decreased time to weather and local news. However, he may be implying causation. For example, has he analyzed the economic landscape of the past year? Have other TV stations also have advertisers cancel their contracts? May another medium of technology (e.g., online) be slowly taking over the advertising revenue market? The presence of these confounding variables must be seriously considered before making the conclusion that his loss of advertising contracts are due to the change in television scheduling.
</span>
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 336 350
No. of Characters: 1713 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.281 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.098 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.82 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.152 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.597 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.136 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 69, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'could' requires the base form of the verb: 'revert'
Suggestion: revert
...th advertising revenues; that is, could reverting from national to local news restrict th...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, e.g., first, however, if, may, so, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1794.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 332.0 441.139720559 75% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.40361445783 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.2685907696 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.08485500174 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.569277108434 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 549.0 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.0911817355 57.8364921388 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.6 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.1333333333 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.46666666667 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.265359308264 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0771134568438 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0922544916794 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127596951995 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0640575491152 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.04 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.91 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.