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 author of memorandum reasons that to attract more viewers to their late-night news program and avoid further advertising loss, they have to restore the time for local news and weather as they did past. To support this recommendation, the manager cites following facts: First, they changed time allocation intending to more on national news and less on weather and local news. Second, most complaints during the period are about their coverage of weather and local news. Finally, their change in coverage coincided with cancelling advertisement of local businesses. However, this line of inference is dubious in many points.
To beginning with, the author appeals to the fact that decreasing time for local news and weather concurs with increment of complaints from viewers. Here, it is assumed that their concurrency implies causation. However, there is no evidence for this assumption. It is entirely possible that although most complaints from viewers were concerned with coverage of weather and local news, they were not about time allocation but about a point of view the program has or about their giving false report. Or, it is equally possible that despite of the ratio of complaints about local new and weather to the whole of complaints were high enough for representing those who complained, the absolute number of complaints was not large enough for whole viewers. Without substantiating this assumption, the recommendation is unpersuasive to me.
Another assumption the argument relies on is that the reason local companies canceled advertisement is the program’s decision to cut off time for local news and weather. Yet, the author provides no substantiating evidence for it. It is conceivable that they canceled advertisement because of recent increment of advertisement cost. If so, only businesses which can afford the cost sustain the advertisement contract. Another possibility is that extant local businesses advertising on the show is too small to affect the benefit of the company. Then, returning their time allocation would not help avoid further advertisement lose. The author must provide evidence indicating causal relation between advertisement loss and their change in coverage.
Finally, granted all the evidence I asked are given, however, the author commits a kind of time shift fallacy, that is, the author assumes that the present situation is similar enough to the past situation so that if the program will expand coverage of local news and weather, then more viewer come and no additional advertising happen. Without substantial evidence for it, it is entirely possible that all the prospect viewers of the show are watching it so that whatever they do, the rating would not be increased. Also, if all local advertisers cancelled their contract and only national big businesses remain in the contract, then their expanding local news and weather would cause additional loss of advertisement since national businesses are prefer national news to local news or weather.
In sum, the recommendation is not persuasive as it stands. To improve the validity of the argument, I suggest a new research on representativeness of complaint they were given and advertising cost of the program. Also, to assess the recommendation more precisely, I also need to know whether there is any negative consequence of the recommendation.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly. it is said: 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. it is not back to old levels.
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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: 24 15
No. of Words: 530 350
No. of Characters: 2769 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.798 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.225 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.939 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 201 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.006 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.299 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.493 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.066 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 750, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'preferred'.
Suggestion: preferred
...rtisement since national businesses are prefer national news to local news or weather....
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 111, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'new research'.
Suggestion: new research
...the validity of the argument, I suggest a new research on representativeness of complaint they...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, second, so, then, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 34.0 16.3942115768 207% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2847.0 2260.96107784 126% => OK
No of words: 530.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.37169811321 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79809637944 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00205755951 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 240.0 204.123752495 118% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.452830188679 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 888.3 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 13.0 4.96107784431 262% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 75.752051219 57.8364921388 131% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.625 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0833333333 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.70833333333 5.70786347227 47% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.311671826143 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0892682836198 0.0743258471296 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.107938085492 0.0701772020484 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.183235680733 0.128457276422 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.128503973756 0.0628817314937 204% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.87 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.