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.
In the argument the author has explained the issue faced by the business manager of a television station. The news channel has stopped showing the daily updates for the weather updates and locale news and replaced it with national news. Further, he says that the viewers are affected by this sudden change as many complaints were inclined towards the same problem. So in order to provide solution the manager has said that to increase revenue and to avoid losing any viewership they should expand their coverage on the local weather news report. In this argument the author has not provided any numbers or figues associated with the whole problem. Therefore, there are number of assumptions that can depend on this argument.
Firstly, the author has failed to explain that how much percentage of viewers have been affected by the change. No figures have been presented so that a comparison can be done. There is a possibility that the complaints that are recieved are less compared to the people who do not have a problem with national news. For instance,let us suppose the viewers are more than one million and the total number of complaints received by the channel is in few thousands then it should not be a major problem. The argument also do not tell about the other complaints that were done by the viewers. Hence, it is not necessary that the viewers are affected only by this problem, there could be other reasons too or they might not be affected at all.
Secondly, the revenue generation of the news channel is not discussed by the author thoroughly. The author has just stated that the revenue has decreased but has not mentioned how much percentage of revenue generation is affected. If the revenue generation is a major problem faced by the company then only they should tackle this otherwise if it is not raising drastic change then it is not necessary that the coverage of the news should be changed.
Thirdly, the author has not mentioned the reason why the local news channel has stopped advertising with the channel. There is also no information regarding the amount of money that will be spent on finding new local news channel for the weather and local news coverage. What if the money spent on finding local channel will be greater than the revenue lost by the news company. Hence, this leads to the conclusion that considering this solution can also lead to the loss of the company.
Lastly, I would like to end my argument here by stating that by not presenting the enough pieces of evidence in the form of percentages, the number and figures it is difficult to conclude that the solution given by the author is correct or not. There can be plenty of different ways to address this issue. Henceforth, it would not be right to say that author's argument is correct.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 22 15
No. of Words: 486 350
No. of Characters: 2265 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.695 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.66 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.399 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.091 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.811 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.319 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 329, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , let
...problem with national news. For instance,let us suppose the viewers are more than on...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, hence, if, lastly, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2314.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 485.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 4.77113402062 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69283662038 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.48531535882 2.78398813304 89% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.420618556701 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 722.7 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.7612407488 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.181818182 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0454545455 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.63636363636 5.70786347227 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.203891166152 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0662606622862 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0686413164942 0.0701772020484 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.116084551857 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0848742224472 0.0628817314937 135% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.39 12.5979740519 82% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.56 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 87.0 98.500998004 88% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.