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 in the above stated prompt is about a television station and the ongoing crisis there and how they are planning on addressing this predicament. According to their claim in the memorandum, the main reason for this particular circumstance that decreae in revenues and abrogation of contracts by local advertisement companies is because a greater number of hours is dedicated for national news than the local news and weather. And the only way out of this quagmire is to refurbish the time dedicated to local news and weather. There are numerous unwarrented assumptions and logical fallacies in the above argument upon which I will be shedding light upon.
To begin with, it is claimed that most of the complaints are regarding station's coverage of weather and local news. Fact the first, these complaints which are submitted by viewers with respect to weather and local news could be anything. For example, the complaint could be that the television station's weather prediction is not accurate enough or that the local news is provided only for a particular region of the city and not others. The complaints does not necessarily have to be related to the decreased time devoted to weather and local news. It is no where mentioned in the argument that there is any complaint about increased hours national news.
Secondly, the cancellation of the local advertising companies with the television station could be because of many other reasons, and these other reasons have not been factored in while reasoning out this very circumstance. For example, maybe the ad companies had more benefits in a contract with another television station. Maybe there was an economic surge and most of the ad companies in that locality had moved to another region. Hence, It cannot be claimed that because the Television station has started to dedicate increased hours to national news local advertisements have annulled their contract.
Furthermore, it cannot be said that by restoring the number of hours of the local news and weather will reverse this very situation and bring revenures back up. What if the revenues plummeted because of an economic meltdown. Then, the claimed solution will no effect and would not solve the matter at hand.
In conclusion, the claim that restoraion of of time to local news and weather will increase the revenues is not an ironclad claim and is riddiled with several unwarrented assumptions. It does not hold together when analysed and questioned the assumptions. Therefore, more research and data analysis needs to done in order to prove the above statement true.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 12 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 426 350
No. of Characters: 2136 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.543 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.014 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.698 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.331 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 453, Rule ID: AGREEMENT_SENT_START[1]
Message: You should probably use 'do'.
Suggestion: do
...the city and not others. The complaints does not necessarily have to be related to t...
^^^^
Line 3, column 556, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...evoted to weather and local news. It is no where mentioned in the argument that th...
^^
Line 7, column 104, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hours of the local news and weather will reverse this very situation and bring re...
^^
Line 9, column 42, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: of
...n conclusion, the claim that restoraion of of time to local news and weather will inc...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, furthermore, hence, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, while, for example, in conclusion, to begin with, 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: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2183.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 426.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12441314554 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54310108192 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75532962555 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.450704225352 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.2676755483 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.894736842 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4210526316 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.94736842105 5.70786347227 139% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.324648838686 0.218282227539 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113932747174 0.0743258471296 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0928778498706 0.0701772020484 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.187306357312 0.128457276422 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0962431918781 0.0628817314937 153% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.