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.
A business manager of a television station is recommending that the time devoted to weather and local news be restored to its former level. The manager's line of reasoning is that restoring the time of weather and local news can attract more viewers to the program and thus avoid losing more advertising news. The evidence throughout the argument, however, is insufficient and hence fails to corroborate the conclusion.
First of all, the business manager rests on the assumption that the local businesses cancelling advertising contracts is because of the small proportion of the weather and local news. What if there are other reasons causing the cancellation of contracts? Maybe it is due to the worsening of overall economic environment. If the economic situation is bad, then it is reasonable for companies to reduce their expenditure by decreasing advertising revenues.
Even if the adjustments in coverage of news really contributes to the cancellation of advertisements, the argument ignores the possibility that the preference of audiences may change within the next few years. In other words, since the time of national news of the late-night news program has only been increased for merely one year, it is hard to say whether the audience will gradually accept and even prefer national news. The result of this adjustment should be evaluated after a longer time.
Furthermore, information of the ratio of the number of complaints to the overall amount of audiences should be provided. In other words, the manager neglected the possibility that there may be only a little proportion of audience that are complaining. To make the degree of credibility higher, the manager should provide further evidence.
In sum, the argument is not completely sound. The evidence in support of the conclusion is not solid enough to prove the conclusion. To reinforce validity of the recommendation, the business manager should provide the reason of the advertising cancellation, as well as the proportion of the complaining people. Also, the recommendation should be made after additional years of observation in audience preference.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 337 350
No. of Characters: 1756 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.285 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.211 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.045 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.824 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.361 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.064 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 68, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...manager rests on the assumption that the local businesses cancelling advertising ...
^^
Line 5, column 313, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ght news program has only been increased for merely one year, it is hard to say w...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, really, so, then, thus, well, as well as, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 12.0 28.8173652695 42% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1802.0 2260.96107784 80% => OK
No of words: 337.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.3471810089 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28457229495 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.11249514453 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 171.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.507418397626 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 571.5 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 50.6359556047 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.0 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8235294118 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.41176470588 5.70786347227 130% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.328332801878 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0866580704218 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.121208546585 0.0701772020484 173% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.16617502735 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.132372814194 0.0628817314937 211% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.75 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.89 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 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.