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.
Firstly, the author mentions complaints about the station's coverage of weather and local news but nothing specific on what these complaints were about. Perhaps, there is a new anchor who is green in the role, still learning and not yet confident. This has caused news to be delivered in a way different from the previous expereience news anchor. If this is the case, maybe a more experienced anchor or even a co-anchor to make things more interesting might be the solution to less complaints. The weather an local news will still be delivered during the same time frame but will be more interesting.
Secondly, the ides that local businesses that used to advertise during the late-night programs are cancelling their contracts due to less local news and more national news might not be entirely true. First question to ask is; are these businesses moving out of the commnuity and no longer need to advertise with the news station? In this situation, changing alloted time will not help rather the staion's business development team should reach out to new businesses in the community for sponsorship. Also, these businesses cancelling contract might also be in the process of optimizing costs in their company and advertising is one of the cost-reduction strategy they are pursuing. The author should make enquries with the local business, understand why the are cancelling their contracts and determine if the change in alloted time slot is the true root cause.
Finally, there is no mention of why time for national news was increase and weather and local news decreased. Have these conditions changed for the station to reconsider reverting back? Is there a major paying sponsor that will rather have their ad shown for longer time during the national news? It is also possible that majority of the residents tune in to the station for nation news so there is more viewership during this time that when weather an local news is discusses. There could also be other stations in the community that focus mainly on weather and local news therefore, devoting more time to national news makes this staion in queston more unique
In order to fully side with increasing time for weather and local news additional information based on paragraphs above is needed.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 13 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 377 350
No. of Characters: 1853 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.406 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.915 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.565 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.562 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.031 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.365 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 51, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...he author mentions complaints about the stations coverage of weather and local news but ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 477, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun complaints is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...re interesting might be the solution to less complaints. The weather an local news w...
^^^^
Line 1, column 506, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...olution to less complaints. The weather an local news will still be delivered duri...
^^
Line 3, column 754, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...with the local business, understand why the are cancelling their contracts and determin...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 451, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...ship during this time that when weather an local news is discusses. There could al...
^^
Line 5, column 451, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'local news'.
Suggestion: local news
...ship during this time that when weather an local news is discusses. There could also be other...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 662, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...makes this staion in queston more unique In order to fully side with increasing t...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, therefore
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1891.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 377.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.01591511936 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.4064143971 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62199947937 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 183.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.485411140584 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 585.0 705.55239521 83% => 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: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.1880476463 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.066666667 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1333333333 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.53333333333 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.415405775996 0.218282227539 190% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.156116194683 0.0743258471296 210% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.11412575124 0.0701772020484 163% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.261189471653 0.128457276422 203% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0753716221379 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.23 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.