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.
The business manager of a television station suggested that the company should put more time into weather and local news instead of national news to increase advertising revenues. To make the argument more convincing, the manager needs to verify a lot of points they are taking for granted.
First, we need to consider the quality of the complaints. How many complaints did the company get? If there are just five complaints, then can these complaints represent the whole population? Maybe the viewers that made complaints complained about everything, not only the station’s coverage of weather and local news but also about the national news. The manager should provide more details about the complaints. If the complaints are not reasonable, then the manager can ignore them. If they are reasonable, maybe the problems lie not in the weather and local news, but in all the TV programs they provide. If this is the case, the manager should think about what may be wrong with their whole strategy.
Furthermore, even if there were a lot of complaints about the weather and local news, what were they about? They may not be concerned with the time coverage of these programs, but with their quality. Then the company needs to increase the quality of these programs instead of devoting more time to the ones the viewers dislike.
The manager seems to suggest that the decrease in advertising is related to the shorter time of weather and local news. Maybe the problem is not related to the program at all. It is highly probable that there are other reasons to account for the decrease in advertising. Perhaps there is a downturn in the advertising industry, and they need to cut the money spent on everything, not just advertising. It is also likely that the viewers may turn to youtube or other Internet websites rather than watching TV. Hence, the advertising companies are turning their focus on the more modernistic way of gaining information. Or, more people tend to watch TV at a different time, thus decreasing the willingness of advertising companies to invest money in the late-night news program.
Also, the manager doesn’t mention the reason why they have devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. Maybe they are changing gears, and it may take a long time for their strategy to turn into profits. Referring to just some complaints and statistics is not enough to account for the failure of their change.
The manager needs to consider the above questions to make his argument more convincing.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 430 350
No. of Characters: 2065 1500
No. of Different Words: 177 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.554 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.802 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.509 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.917 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.515 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.31 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.53 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.101 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 610, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ut in all the TV programs they provide. If this is the case, the manager should th...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, hence, if, may, so, then, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2134.0 2260.96107784 94% => OK
No of words: 429.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.97435897436 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55107846309 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61894725129 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.428904428904 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 654.3 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.7877104137 57.8364921388 58% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 88.9166666667 119.503703932 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.875 23.324526521 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.54166666667 5.70786347227 45% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.329094592518 0.218282227539 151% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0936483799918 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.126204893759 0.0701772020484 180% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.18713386344 0.128457276422 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0922188630395 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.9 14.3799401198 76% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 62.68 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.25 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.39 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 79.0 98.500998004 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.