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 argument states that if the coverage of weather and local news is started again the advertisement revenue that the channel generates will increase again. The argument has several assumptions. It first assumes that the local businesses would start giving advertisement contracts again if they were to resume weather and local news coverage. The argument assumes that there is no other reason why the local businesses would stop the contracts. It might be possible that the companies stopped It because they found better advertisement methods or some other channel that charges less for such advertisements, meaning there might be a variety of reasons for it. The channel must inspect the reasons as to why the contracts are being taken away because if they simply assume that resuming local coverage will get more contracts and if it indeed isn’t a valid assumption they are at risk of not increasing their revenues.
Another assumption is that resuming local and weather coverage would result in an increase in the number of viewers. The argument does state that there have been complaints with respect to the current coverage but what these complaints are is not revealed. So, it is assumed that these complaints are regarding the less time given to local coverage, however, these complaints might be regarding other things like the quality of the news or the accuracy of it. So, the channel must carefully inspect these complaints and find out whether they spring from the reduced coverage problem. If the assumption that the complaints are indeed due to reduced coverage proves to be unwarranted then the channel might not still get the expected increase in viewers.
The memorandum says that the majority of the complaints received were about the local and weather coverage, but it does not enumerate these complaints. It is important to find out what proportion of the viewers have registered these complaints. If only two hundred people out of a million viewers have complaints it is invalid to assume that a major part of the viewer population would have the same problems with respect to the coverage. Without proper knowledge about the number of complaints and the type of complaints, it is simply an assumption that since the complaints are received it must represent what the majority of the viewers think. If the assumption proves to be inconsequential the channel might not see an increase in the number of viewers that it expects.
Thus, the argument makes several assumptions and the results the channels want to achieve that is: increase in the number of viewers, increase in advertisement contracts, etc.
depend largely on them. The channel should evaluate these factors before taking any steps.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 446 350
No. of Characters: 2239 1500
No. of Different Words: 178 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.596 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.02 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.648 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 138 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.846 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.369 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.543 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.154 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 585, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ring from the reduced coverage problem. If the assumption that the complaints are ...
^^
Line 5, column 246, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ewers have registered these complaints. If only two hundred people out of a millio...
^^
Line 5, column 648, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...what the majority of the viewers think. If the assumption proves to be inconsequen...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, regarding, so, still, then, thus, as to, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2285.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 445.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13483146067 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59293186426 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69716661312 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.41797752809 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 702.9 705.55239521 100% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.8176823745 57.8364921388 103% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.263157895 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4210526316 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.26315789474 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.149095573634 0.218282227539 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0508640947827 0.0743258471296 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0504559263468 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0718272431074 0.128457276422 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0526617123566 0.0628817314937 84% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.77 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.65 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.