The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station
Over the past year, our late-night new 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 the views were concerned with our station’s coverage of the weather and local news. In Addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have just cancelled their advertising contract 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.
The memorandum states that there have been complaints regarding the coverage of local news and weather, which has, in turn, resulted in the drop in viewership of the channel. Their solution is to give more time for weather and local news and in turn, their viewership and revenue from local advertising will increase. I find this approach tightly logically flawed for the following reasons.
The time given to national news might have been increased for multiple reasons. There might not be much to report locally and there is only so much weather information a channel can provide. Just because the time for local news and weather is less than that for national news doesn't mean that it has decreased over the past year, It might have remained the same and the time given for national news has been increased making it seem like it has reduced.
The concerns of coverage of weather and local news don't have to do with the amount of air time given only. It might be possible the reporter is monotonous and no one enjoys his/her delivery. It is also possible a lot of the data and information that has been reported has been wrong and not properly corroborated. This could be some of the reasons for the complaints from the people.
As mentioned above down in the number of viewership due to complaint is a possible reason that the companies have shifted to other channels for advertising their products, It is also possible that there are new methods of advertising which is more effective and economical, therefore companies have started to adopt those techniques like social media and or other streaming platforms like youtube.
Even if the manager's assumptions for the reasons In the drop of viewership and approach to bring it back up and even increase revenue is correct, there is no guarantee that giving more time for weather and local news will help gain more viewers and revenue. It is possible that the drop is due to other factors an economic slump which is making companies reduce their advertising budgets, irrespective of time given they will not spend more money on advertising.
To sum up, if the manager had shown supporting data that the complaints were actually related to less coverage of weather and local news, or evidence that the increase in viewership will bring back companies to advertise on their channel would have helped agree with the conclusion /solution the manager had come up with.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 416 350
No. of Characters: 1973 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.516 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.743 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.491 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 16.399 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.369 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.657 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 277, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...her is less than that for national news doesnt mean that it has decreased over the pas...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 52, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...s of coverage of weather and local news dont have to do with the amount of air time ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 329, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ot properly corroborated. This could be some of the reasons for the complaints from the peo...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, if, regarding, so, therefore, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2023.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 413.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.89830508475 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50803742585 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53758802588 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.440677966102 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 629.1 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 99.2654655611 57.8364921388 172% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.5 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.5 23.324526521 126% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.92857142857 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.287462849385 0.218282227539 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.1126999871 0.0743258471296 152% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0897691763556 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.156197833985 0.128457276422 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0875337043219 0.0628817314937 139% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.5 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.73 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.21 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.