'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 would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The claims made by the manager state that reducing the time given for local and weather new has had some negative effects. The channel has lost some advertising contracts that impacted it's revenues. The channel is contemplating on increasing the time devoted to local and weather news to get back the contracts and increase the number of viewers. There are some factors that need to be evaluated before we can conclude that adopting the new policy would indeed be beneficial.
The manager mentions that most of the complaints received were related to coverage of local and weather news. There no information given with respect to the types of complaints, the number of complaints that have been received. It cannot be assumed that complaints are pertaining only to the reduced coverage. The complaints might be regarding some other aspects like - the quality and accuracy of news, concerns with the tone of the news narrator, etc. There might be a myriad of reasons for these complaints.
There is another assumption that the advertising contracts have reduced due to cut down on the local news coverage. The contracts may have been terminated because the advertising agencies have found different and better ways of advertisement apart from television advertisement. They might have signed a contract with another channel which costs them less money for the same amount of advertising. Thus there might be multiple reasons for the same. If the reason for the contracts being taken back is anything other than reduced coverage, it definitely does not make sense to assume that increasing coverage again would bring back the contracts.
The claim states that increasing local new coverage would see a corresponding increase in the number of viewers, while it might be true, the channel stills needs to consider the type of complaints that have come in earlier. They should try to understand and address these complaints. If they condone the impact that these complaints might have, they are at risk of not getting an increase in number of viewers. For example - If majority of the complaints are regarding the quality of news and the channel does not improve upon this factor . If they just increase the coverage, it would not see an increase in viewers because they were concerned about the quality of news and not coverage.
Thus, there a lot of factors that need evaluation before adopting the new policy. The factors discussed if studied properly and then acted upon will surely be efficacious in channel's aim of increasing the number of viewers and the advertisement revenues.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 425 350
No. of Characters: 2120 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.54 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.988 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.587 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.687 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.555 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 200, 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.
...g contracts that impacted its revenues. The channel is contemplating on increasing ...
^^^
Line 1, column 324, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...s to get back the contracts and increase the number of viewers. There are some fa...
^^
Line 5, column 399, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...ney for the same amount of advertising. Thus there might be multiple reasons for the...
^^^^
Line 7, column 539, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...hannel does not improve upon this factor . If they just increase the coverage, it ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
if, may, regarding, so, still, then, thus, while, apart from, for example, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => 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: 2167.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 425.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.09882352941 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54043259262 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67246724697 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.458823529412 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 668.7 705.55239521 95% => 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: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.1630148664 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.19047619 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2380952381 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.28571428571 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.164750732402 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0563973933429 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0761498749086 0.0701772020484 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0960785753715 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0587710763203 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.3 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.49 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => 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.