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.”
In this memorandum, the manager argues that the program should restore the time devoted to weather and local new to its former level in order to attract more viewers and avoid losing any further. Although this argument may seem convincing, the lack of evidence leads me to question the validity of the argument.
First of all, the manager should give more concrete evidence concerned with complaints received from viewers. Although most of the complaints received are related with the stations' coverage of weather and local news, the total number of it may be minute. For example, if there are only five complaints to the station, and four complaints are about the coverage issue, then since the number of the complaint itself is marginal, the problem may not be a big issue. Furthermore, they only monitor the result of coverage change only for one year. Thus, to conclude that the complaints of viewers is originated from the coverage issue, and also it is significant problem, the author should monitor the complaint for longer time such as five years.
Next, the manager should suggest sufficient evidence to prove the causal relationship between the coverage issue and the cancellation of advertising contracts. TV stations may change not only this policy but also other policies during past year. In this case, the cancellation of advertising contracts is possibly not affected by the coverage issue, but other policies such as increase of advertising cost. In addition, even the companies canceled the ads for late-night news program, they may open new contracts with other TV programs from same news station such as TV drama.
Lastly, additional pieces of evidence about the effect of restoration should be offered. Since there are no concrete evidence that the total number of viewers is decreased, they should investigate about it formerly before restoration. Additionally, the present viewers plausibly adapted to the composition of present TV station. In this case, the rash restoration may cause the negative effect in both of number of viewers and the advertising revenues.
According to the aforementioned three reasons, the manager should not rashly restore the coverage of the television station. More pieces of evidence that may adamantly support the decision should be supplied in precedence.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 370 350
No. of Characters: 1899 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.386 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.132 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.658 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.765 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.511 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.346 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.069 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 172, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...omplaints received are related with the stations coverage of weather and local news, the...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, if, lastly, may, so, then, thus, for example, in addition, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1948.0 2260.96107784 86% => OK
No of words: 370.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.26486486486 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38581623665 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73667299998 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.467567567568 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 610.2 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.4468124415 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.588235294 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7647058824 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.52941176471 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.192933209408 0.218282227539 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0598260330054 0.0743258471296 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0648029653523 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101395872456 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0600283256106 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.