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.
The memorandum of the business manager of a television station has an anecdote that mentions how their Television Rating dropped and they were losing their business after devoting more time to national news and less time to weather and local news. He suggested that they should roll back to restore the time devoted to weather and local news in order to fix their losing grip on their business. But before we consider this conclusion as a final one, few points must be highlighted.
Firstly, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with station's coverage of weather and local news. But it is not mentioned that whether they were giving you merit for giving equal importance to national news or they were reproaching for lack of local news content. It might also be possible that their complaints were regarding inaccuracy of the data provided through news. It is also plausible that less important local news were given precedence over more important news to hide some facts. More focus is needed on the content of complaints to narrow down the actual problem of unhappiness of people.
Secondly, local businessmen who used to advertise during the late night news program started cancelling their advertising contracts with the company. There is no enough evidence to prove that increased attention to national news is the cause of this loss. A possibility of poorly employed advertising strategies must be taken into account in order to properly assess the cause of canceling advertising revenue. Another possibility can be thought of as late night news shows have very less audience to watch and thus the businesses have stopped their funding because of no significant growth in their own business.
To summarize, there is no clear mention on the content of complaints. It justs blatantly states the cause is due to less timespan allotted to local and weather news, but we must investigate further to narrow down a specific cause of the complaints. In addition to this, there is lack of information about local businessmen who refrained from advertising to the television station. We must dig deeper into marketing and advertising schemes of the television station and look for a fault.
Thus, it is impossible to state that going back to giving more time to local news and weather will restore their business to the zenith, as the prompt suggests insuffecient data to analyze.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 17 15
No. of Words: 397 350
No. of Characters: 1975 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.464 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.975 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.643 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.608 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.578 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.138 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, look, regarding, second, secondly, so, thus, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2015.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 397.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07556675063 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46372701284 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68380078301 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.491183879093 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 625.5 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.4025311788 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.529411765 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3529411765 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.11764705882 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.415335066119 0.218282227539 190% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.131141091344 0.0743258471296 176% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0988145029831 0.0701772020484 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.223408449438 0.128457276422 174% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0701468270334 0.0628817314937 112% => 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: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => 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.