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 is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
According to the manager of the television station, the local businesses have withdrawn their advertisement from the channel because the tv has reduced the time for broadcasting the local news and due to this, they have lost advertising revenues.
However, the reason for cancellation of advertisement by local businesses might not be the decreased local news time. May be the quality of their advertisement and local news were not good enough that the businesses felt no growth in their customers. The local news would have been of low quality that the viewers were not attracted to the products the businesses were offering. The manager only speaks that the businesses were cancelling their contracts but does not specify that the reason is due to the decreased duration.
Also, The complaints of the viewers might not be for the coverage time of the local news and weather, but for the quality of the news. The viewers might be satisfied of the duration but not of the quality. We cannot be sure that increasing the local news time is going to attract more viewers. This case can even worsen the situation because coverage of lower quality news for longer duration can actually make them lose more viewers and revenues could go further down.
Further, the manager has mentioned about just the complaints and we do not know for sure that the viewers reduced because of this. May be the viewers were only complaining regarding specific parts of the news or some of the content they were broadcasting could have been offensive to the local people. Also, we do not know whether the tv had more viewers in the past when the local news coverage was more than present. It might have been same from the past and we have no certainty that the increase in the duration would guarantee the increase in viewers in the future.
So, the argument is weak as the manager does not clearly talks about what the complaint are and whether the reduced duration has actually caused them to lose the viewers which in real, might have remain the same through out and does not guarantee for the attraction of new viewers and increase in advertisement revenue.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 368 350
No. of Characters: 1743 1500
No. of Different Words: 141 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.38 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.736 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.483 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 108 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 55 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.286 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.039 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.433 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.663 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.26 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 123, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (May) must be used with a third-person verb: 'is'.
Suggestion: is
...t be the decreased local news time. May be the quality of their advertisement and...
^^
Line 3, column 160, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ay be the quality of their advertisement and local news were not good enough that...
^^
Line 7, column 136, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (May) must be used with a third-person verb: 'is'.
Suggestion: is
...he viewers reduced because of this. May be the viewers were only complaining regar...
^^
Line 9, column 58, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'does' requires base form of the verb: 'talk'
Suggestion: talk
...is weak as the manager does not clearly talks about what the complaint are and whethe...
^^^^^
Line 9, column 197, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'remained'.
Suggestion: remained
...e the viewers which in real, might have remain the same through out and does not guara...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 213, Rule ID: THROUGH_OUT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'throughout'?
Suggestion: throughout
...ich in real, might have remain the same through out and does not guarantee for the attracti...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, however, if, may, regarding, so
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1782.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 368.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.84239130435 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37987740619 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.52332572839 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 146.0 204.123752495 72% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.396739130435 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 546.3 705.55239521 77% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
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: 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: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.4558494252 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.285714286 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2857142857 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.71428571429 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.257757402508 0.218282227539 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.114103868142 0.0743258471296 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0841852370664 0.0701772020484 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.161901792217 0.128457276422 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0773497170945 0.0628817314937 123% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.5 14.3799401198 101% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.09 12.5979740519 88% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.54 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 61.0 98.500998004 62% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.